Gary's Webs
by Juno Bernike
Summary: The country was at war. The school was at war. And Jimmy Hopkins, himself, was waging a war of his own—one tiny skirmish at a time.
1. Turnin' on a Screw (Winter 2007)

_some notes:_  
 _\- this work is complete, and I will be updating it as I finish minor edits._  
 _\- this started as a series of smut oneshots and got so far away from me during the planning process that it's now completely unrecognizable._  
 _\- if you have any criticisms or catch any grammar oddities or spelling mistakes please let me know. I was the sole proofreader and editor and as such some mistakes may still be present_  
 _\- finally: i hope you enjoy reading this half as much as I did writing it_

* * *

 _ **WINTER, 2007  
**_ _ **Chapter 1**_

 _"The world is round—my square don't fit at all."  
_ Queens of the Stone Age, "Turnin' On the Screw" - _Era Vulgaris,_ 2007

* * *

All considered, Jimmy figured that most everyone had, maybe a few, but at _least_ one moment in their lives which they could consider a turning point _—_ a juncture around which they could definitively classify any point as being _before_ , and _after_. Years later, when prompted, he'd take his time considering his own options—there was the day he first arrived at Bullworth Academy; or the day he and Gary Smith plummeted from the academy's bell tower less than a year later. There was the day two years after that, when Gary left Christy Martin's house with car keys in his hands, swaying and inebriated, and Jimmy had let him go, watched him walk out the front door, saying nothing.

But he knew as well as anyone that stories are often determined long before they start, and if he had to waylay dramatics and go by ear, one night in particular tended to stick out to Jimmy as the real beginning of it all. That had been the evening the whole mess with Kirby started, and in the way messes often seem to—in the middle of the night, and completely by accident.

It was January, and the turn of the new year had brought a fresh, hard snowfall—the kind that encased all the dirt and blood into the bitumen and left nothing but a deceptive sheen behind. Anyone who knew better could almost pretend the school was innocent, when viewed after a snowfall like that one—but even beneath a spotless cover of white you could still sense the presence of dirt, and with it the implicit suspicion that there was a war going on. The _country_ was at war, of course, in those days—that was a hard fact to escape. But some other, independent conflict, far smaller in scope to all but those who lived it, waged on at Bullworth Academy, had probably been waging since the day the foundation was laid. The country was at war. The school was at war. And Jimmy Hopkins, himself, was waging a war of his own—one tiny skirmish at a time.

With the hood of his snow-dampened sweater pulled tight over his head and the contents of his backpack rattling ominously, Jimmy was the picture of insubordination. On paper, it was an easy enough infiltration—walk right into Bullworth's main building via the maintenance door, place a small stockpile of water guns and a foul-smelling, duct-taped water bottle inside a nondescript crate in the janitor's storeroom, and then get the hell out. Jimmy had weighed the pros and cons of the plan, which had been detailed in needless depth by Earnest Jones with the aid of a whiteboard: he couldn't say that he was _thrilled_ by the idea of Earnest and crew having such easy access to water guns, and there was no _way_ he could talk his way out of serious consequences if his involvement was revealed following whatever... _incident_ took place the next day, but Jimmy figured that so long as he didn't fire any water guns himself, he'd come away from the whole thing just fine. It was easy enough to rationalize, considering the compensation Earnest had promised for a job well done.

But the first roadblock of the night presented itself when Jimmy set out for the maintenance door a quarter to midnight and found it locked tight. He was momentarily peeved—but as much as he didn't like setbacks, life at Bullworth Academy (and, he supposed, life in general) had set Jimmy up to be an improviser, and he'd snuck in through the front door easily enough in the past. That night was no exception, and for the first few moments after slipping in through the front undetected, Jimmy was nearly able to convince himself that the rest of the plan would go off without a hitch.

"Hopkins? Is that you?"

Jimmy darted for the shadows in the west-wing corridor on instinct, but a strong hand closed around his wrist and yanked him back toward the entrance.

Jimmy threw an elbow back and his captor swore and staggered. He spun around and back, putting space between himself and the aggressor, before relaxing and lowering his guard. "Oh. Uh...sorry, Tom."

Tom Gurney's face, twisted in pain, was bathed in shadow, his black eye like a bruised pit beneath the band of his gray beanie. Jimmy had never seen Tom without that black eye, and it seemed to Jimmy that the boy was simply perpetually bruised (though who wasn't, in those days?) Tom bent over, gripping his midsection. "I think you got my solar plexus."

"Shit happens." Jimmy whispered. "Especially when you go around grabbing people in the dark. What are you doing here?"

"Setting up a prank. What are _you_ —" Tom began, but he spotted Jimmy's backpack. "Oh. Nice," he said approvingly. "What have we got?"

Jimmy looked around; there seemed to be a dearth of prefects in the area, an anomaly both welcome and foreboding. A break in routine on part of authority at Bullworth was never a good sign, as their schedules seemed to afford them all the flexibility of a strait jacket, but Jimmy couldn't complain about the opportunity to operate away from prefect supervision.

Tom seemed to pick up on his confusion. "All upstairs. We staged a, uh... _diversion_ that should keep them busy for a minute."

"Who's 'we'?"

"Me and Davis. Well...mostly Davis. I don't really care about the prank, I just don't have anything better to do. Oh, and Trent was supposed to be here too, but he never showed. Come on, show me!" Tom said suddenly, taking one of the backpack straps in his hands.

"Fine! No tugging, come on..." Jimmy led him further into the corridor, away from view of the front office and stairwell, and opened up the bag.

"Careful with this, I dunno what it is..." Jimmy said, withdrawing the firmly sealed bottle. He could smell it even before he removed it.

"Holy shit," Tom said, choking.

"Yup," Jimmy said, wrinkling his nose.

"What is it?"

"Dunno," Jimmy repeated. "Smells like piss, though."

"It just might be." Tom said, regarding the bottle. "Yeah, I think this is animal urine."

 _"What?"_

"Like, for pests and stuff."

Jimmy considered the prospect of potentially having to attend classes in a building that smelled like an enormous litterbox for the next several days, or however long it would take for the building to air out, and suddenly doubted very much that the fifty dollars Earnest had promised him would be worth it. He was a man of his word though, and he'd already come this far.

"Here, take it back..." Tom whispered, sticking the bottle back in the bag, the collar of his polo held over his nose. Jimmy shouldered the bag.

"Good luck with whatever you're doing, I guess." Jimmy said. "You know if the janitor's closet is open?"

"Should be. Oh, and," Tom added in a clandestine whisper, as Jimmy set off for the closet, " _You didn't see me._ "

"Likewise," Jimmy replied.

Jimmy started back across the foyer toward the east wing, and almost immediately the second roadblock of the night manifested at the top of the staircase. Edward turned the corner looking as big and mean as ever, his deep navy blue jacket blending into the shadows so well that Jimmy may have missed him all together had the moonlight not glinted off his glasses and given him away. Jimmy knew right away he'd been spotted; he retreated carefully back into the shadows, but not carefully enough.

"Is someone there?" Edward's voice was deafening in the relative silence. Jimmy froze, watching Edward—the prefect didn't seem to spot him, but he remained at the top of the stairs by force of some authoritative sixth sense. Jimmy scanned the foyer, but he already knew he lacked sufficient cover to get across the foyer and into the janitor's closet without a distraction, and he had nothing of the sort. Running through his options in his head, they quickly narrowed to two: bail, or wait Edward out.

He couldn't say he was in the mood to stand upright in a locker or sit in a trash can for the next however many minutes it would take for Edward to continue his patrol, so Jimmy withdrew into the corridor behind him, testing the classroom doors; the second knob he tried twisted, and, gently as possible so as to avoid making any noise at all, he eased the door open.

Jimmy had always had a pretty keen sense of situational awareness. It had saved his ass more than a few times, and all in all was a pretty invaluable trait for a habitual troublemaker to have. But as Jimmy also knew, it doesn't really take much situational awareness at all to know when you've walked in on something you weren't supposed to see.

Trent, who it appeared had come to the main building that night after all, stood at the other end of the classroom just a few yards away. He stood with his back toward Jimmy. At first, due to the low light and distance, Jimmy couldn't make sense of Trent's posture, nearly formless and moving slightly. But as his eyes adjusted, he saw that the movement he'd detected in the dark was another set of arms. Someone else was there, and they had their arms wrapped around his neck and shoulders from the front. Then the rest of the movement he'd seen suddenly fell into place, was easy to distinguish—a tipping head, a groping hand—and then Trent leaned forward slightly, and a face peered out over Trent's shoulder...

"Oh, shit!" The smaller form ducked out of sight.

Jimmy could hear Trent's hushed reply. "Whoa, whoa, what?"

"Stop, stop," the other voice replied. And then, directly to Jimmy, a threat—"I'm gonna kick your ass, Hopkins!"—and Jimmy was woefully familiar with the voice that delivered it.

Jimmy whipped around and reached for the door, which he'd left just slightly ajar—through the gap he could see to his displeasure that Edward had unwittingly followed him, and was only a few classrooms away. Weighing his chances against the prefect, he nudged the door shut and turned to face Kirby Olsen.

Kirby had crossed the room in the seconds it took for Jimmy to lock the door. He snatched Jimmy by the collar and in one swift move brought him to the ground. Some of the air went out of Jimmy's lungs. Kirby was small for a junior, and Jimmy, stupidly, made the constant and ironic mistake of underestimating his strength.

"You're in for a beating, Hopkins. And you can't outrun me here," he hissed. His hair was disheveled.

Jimmy gasped. "Aahh...sorry..."

Trent came into view around Kirby, looking flustered. "The hell are you sneaking around the building at night for?" Trent asked, still catching his breath. He smoothed some of his blonde hair out of his eyes.

"I dunno, why does anyone sneak around at night?" Jimmy evaded.

Kirby's hands curled into Jimmy's collar, and he shook him. "Don't tell _anyone_ what you saw," Kirby said. "Or I swear to God, I'll…I'll…"

Trent rolled his eyes behind Kirby; he disappeared from Jimmy's line of sight and let out possibly the most pointedly theatrical sigh Jimmy thought he'd ever heard.

Kirby's head snapped back toward him. "What?"

"Let the dude up."

"What?"

"I said, let him up. This really isn't necessary," Trent said.

"Oh, yeah?"

"Yeah. Who would he tell?"

Kirby looked aghast. Jimmy was a bit taken aback himself, amazed by the idea that Trent would talk anyone out of a proper beating—never mind that he and Trent were supposed to be on good terms. "You want me to list everyone in the school?"

Trent didn't answer, just looked at Kirby with a look of what Jimmy assumed was pity. "Incredible. You are _that_ ashamed to be seen with me."

He might've imagined it, but Jimmy thought he saw Kirby deflate a little. For a moment, he seemed to forget Jimmy was even there. "We're not doing this now."

Trent shrugged. "Yeah, you're right actually. We're not doing this now. See you around." As casually as though the past few minutes had never occurred, he pulled a beanie out of his pocket, tugged it over his head, yanked the classroom door open, and just like that was gone.

If Jimmy thought Kirby might've deflated earlier, he definitely did now. His shoulders slumped, still twisted away from Jimmy and angled at the door. Jimmy took the opening, and quickly rotated his hip outward, jutted his shoe into Kirby's hip, and rolled matter Kirby's strength, Jimmy was stronger, and he knew it, and within seconds he regained the upper hand.

Straddling him, Jimmy hauled Kirby's upper body off the ground a few inches by his collar, until their noses were almost touching. "I should _kick_ your _ass_ for throwing me around like that." Jimmy hissed. Already he could tell that his tailbone would be bruised tomorrow.

"I'd love to see you try," Kirby replied, but once Jimmy had the upper hand in a fight, it was difficult for anyone, even Kirby, to deny it.

Jimmy dismounted Kirby, got to his feet, and held out a hand to help him up. Kirby looked at him and pointedly got to his feet on his own, dusting himself off.

Jimmy dropped his hand. "You really _didn't_ have to threaten me."

"Sure!" Kirby laughed.

"I mean it. Because I get it."

"Yeah?"

"Yeah. I do." Not even Jimmy was sure what he meant by that, at least not right away, but he convinced even himself that he did indeed _get it_ , whatever _it_ was. Kirby scowled, but he pushed passed Jimmy and into the hallway. The door clicked shut behind him, then Jimmy was alone.

The clock on the wall read 12:04. It was just after midnight, and three things were true: First of all, he was standing in the dark in an empty classroom with a backpack full of piss; second, he'd just watched Trent Northwick and Kirby Olsen kiss, and it had settled into him some confusing emotion he wasn't sure he was capable of understanding. And third: for some inexplicable reason, the kind of reason that required hindsight to properly understand, his face had grown very warm, and his little heart was pounding fit to burst out of his chest.


	2. Missed the Boat

_**WINTER, 2007**_ _ **(cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 2**_

 _"Everyone's unhappy, everyone's ashamed, well, we all just got caught looking at somebody else's page."  
_ Modest Mouse, "Missed the Boat" - _We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank,_ 2007

* * *

For the next week and a half, the smell of wolf urine was inescapable at Bullworth. Somehow, although the majority of the nerds' attack had taken place in the main building, the smell was ever-present, infesting the gym, the library, even the dorms. Jimmy had been right in thinking that the money wasn't worth it, but even so he had massively underestimated just how powerfully a full gallon of old wolf urine would smell until he was forced to sit for forty-five minutes in a room that reeked of it. Hordes of people had taken to eating their lunches across the street from the grounds' entrance, out of reach of the smell.

"I'm gonna kick Earnest's ass," Jimmy said, putting his hood up to protect against the biting mid-January chill.

Pete Kowalski sat beside him against the low stone wall outside Bullworth proper, wrapped in a teal down jacket and unwrapping his burrito with gloved fingers. "You'd better kick your own ass, too, then."

Jimmy said nothing. He knew Pete had a point. He had helped place this impenetrable smelly cloud over the school and now he had to wallow in it like everyone else.

"And anyway," Pete continued. "He already got mountains of detention, plus an ass-kicking by Johnny Vincent, plus he got egged by Justin, _and_ he got spit on by that little freshman, Karen Whats-her-name, and he got shoved in a locker by Kirby…" Pete was counting on his fingers now. Jimmy felt his breath catch a little in his throat at the mention of Kirby's name.

"Yeah, I get the picture," Jimmy said. Had his voice wavered just then? He thought so, although if it had, Pete was too busy detailing all of Earnest's well-deserved misfortune to notice, continuing on as Jimmy's mind wandered.

Kirby had been pointedly avoiding him since the night of the infiltration. Only weeks ago Jimmy would've been thrilled by this, but now it was like a constant reminder of a growing discomfort. In fact, it was getting a bit much for him; Jimmy didn't like awkwardness, especially that of the social variety, and he and Kirby had made uncomfortable, accidental eye-contact from across the cafeteria or in the common room a few too many times for his liking. But putting a name to the tension growing between them would have been a social death of a different kind, so the confrontation Jimmy was beginning to itch for would have to wait, if it ever took place at all.

A shadow fell across him, and a pair of legs entered his vision. "Oh, hey Donald," Pete said.

"Hi," Donald Anderson said dismissively. Pete frowned. "I heard you were looking for a way to get back at Earnest?" Donald asked. There was fog on his glasses and his blonde hair was frozen to his earmuffs.

"Uh…yeah," Jimmy replied.

"I've got an idea."

"Uh huh? A self-serving one?"

Donald went a bit red. "Yeah, maybe a little!" he said, already on the defensive. "Look, I just want you to break into his gym locker and get some of my things back for me, okay?"

"How the hell will that get back at him?"

"I'll give you a Volcano and show you how to rig it to explode when he opens the door."

The thought of a firecracker exploding in Earnest's face was admittedly tempting. "Do it yourself." _I would, but…_

"I would! But the jocks hate us more than ever after the pee incident and I can't go anywhere near the locker room without getting harassed."

"Tough."

"The prefects don't even really go on the athletic grounds at all, you have nothing to worry about." Donald said.

"Can you leave, please?" Pete asked.

Donald ignored him. "I'll pay you. You know I'm good for it."

Jimmy hesitated. The plan was simple but was looking more attractive by the second. He looked at Pete, and Pete threw his hands in the air. "Oh, come on, Jimmy!"

* * *

Backpack, hoodie, and the cover of darkness. Jimmy felt a familiar foreboding in the air that seemed to accompany every errand he carried out for others these days, especially those that took place in the middle of the night. Getting past the prefects and into the athletic grounds was pitifully easy via the bike trails surrounding the school, and the gym itself, as many buildings around the school typically were, was unlocked.

Jimmy slipped into the gym undetected, the waxed floors squeaking beneath his sneakers. It was very dark, with only the dim overnight lights left running to make his way by. He carefully stepped around the bleachers and descended to the boys' locker room.

Just outside the locker room entrance, Jimmy came to a stop. The unmistakable sound of a covert argument echoed into the hallway within.

 _Don't even think about it, Jimmy boy,_ he thought. _Just turn your butt around and go home._ But he didn't. He knew he wouldn't.

He crept closer, keeping well out of sight behind the privacy barrier. He could make out two voices, both hushed but clearly heated.

"...necessary to insult me?"

"So no one would suspect anything. I told you that."

The first voice laughed, humorless and derisive. "Oh, sure. Garden variety insults weren't enough though, right? You just _had_ to say stuff that you knew would actually hurt me? To protect us?"

"I said I was sorry! What else do you want, Trent?"

If alarm bells weren't going off in Jimmy's head before, they were clamoring to be heard now. The moment he identified the voices he made up his mind to abort the mission, to march right back to the dorms, Volcano in hand, and tell Donald exactly where he could shove it. But in his haste to escape, he turned too quickly, and the contents of his backpack shifted, rattling just loudly enough to echo, and before he could say or do anything to stop it, Trent and Kirby were both upon him.

Two strong pairs of hands reached around the privacy wall, hauled Jimmy off his feet, and flung him into the change room. He crashed into a garbage bin and clattered against a row of lockers, coming down on his ankle hard. He felt the joint roll sickeningly.

"Agh," Jimmy said. He rolled over, pulling himself upright.

"Well, well," Kirby said, voice deadly and low. He was dressed in Bullworth sweats and a t-shirt, hair damp from the shower.

Trent laughed. "Hopkins? Seriously?" He looked almost delighted, as though Jimmy was more of a welcome diversion than an interloper. "What is your problem, Jimmy-boy?" Trent asked. He pushed Jimmy back over with his foot. "You want to be drinking through a tube for the rest of your life? 'Cuz we can arrange that."

"Hey, man," Jimmy said, defaulting to prey mode. If he really wanted to, he was confident he could take them both, but that didn't expunge the fact that he had, in fact, just been eavesdropping on them, and it didn't seem clean to attack them without trying to talk them down first. "I'm sorry, I'm just here to grab something."

"How much did you hear this time, weasel?"

 _Weasel._ Jimmy didn't like that. But he swallowed back the urge to kick Kirby in the jaw. "Does it matter? I'm not going to say anything to anyone. It's none of my business."

Kirby regarded him for a moment before straightening and pushing his damp hair out of his face. He looked down at Jimmy. "I should really kick your ass. You _really_ need to have your ass kicked, Hopkins," he said, but something about the tone of his voice told Jimmy that he was already in the clear, at least for now.

Trent shoved his hands in his pockets, shaking his head and smirking bitterly. His amusement had given way to discontent. "Whatever. I'm leaving."

Kirby turned to him. A trace of something subdued appeared in his voice, almost domestic. "Do you want me to walk with—"

"No, that's alright," Trent interrupted. "Wouldn't want anyone catching you in my presence, would we?" Before Kirby could argue or even reply, Trent was gone.

Kirby slammed his fist into a locker, swore, and dropped onto one of the changing benches, head in his hands. After a moment, he stood again, kicked a duffle bag toward the locker island, and began pulling things out of his open locker and throwing them inside in silence. Jimmy stood, leaning against the lockers for support before he felt confident enough that his ankle hadn't rolled too badly to put his weight on it. Earnest's locker was, mercifully, on the other side of the room, and Jimmy was able to get to work breaking in out of sight of Kirby. Even being in the same room as him, Jimmy found, was enough to be a bit distracting, but the faster he retrieved Donald's stuff and installed the Volcano, the faster he could get the hell out of there.

He was in the middle of rigging the firecracker to he door when Kirby's voice cut through the silence so abruptly that he nearly dropped the Volcano on his foot.

"Hopkins."

"Yeah?" He could feel his heart beating in his fingertips.

There was a long pause, the kind that someone makes when they are trying and failing to talk themselves out of saying something. Jimmy heard the bench creak, and Kirby appeared around corner, leaning on the locker island. "Do you actually get it?"

"Do I _what_ now?"

"Last time you said you 'get it'," he said.

Jimmy dredged his memory for context. "Well, sure," he said after a moment. "I get it. You don't want a target on you. People here will take anything and run with it. I definitely get that."

"Oh. Yeah," Kirby said. "So you didn't mean…" He looked away. Was he embarrassed? In the flickering, watery light of the locker room, it was difficult to tell. "I just thought you meant that you, like…have to deal with that kind of thing, too."

"I do," Jimmy said at once, and just like that, as though saying it out loud expelled years of uncertainty, Jimmy realized that he _did_ get it. He had suspected for a long time, but there's only so much you can tell yourself to rationalize something, only so many other avenues to entertain, before you're forced to consider the simpler explanations.

"Really?"

"Yup," was all Jimmy could say, still reeling from the impact of his private revelation.

Kirby looked amused. "It's never the ones you expect, is it?"

Jimmy had thought this himself, but somehow he felt different considering it then. "Yeah, I guess so."

"Swear there's a queer bug going around this school," Kirby said, shaking his head. Jimmy wondered how he could possibly be so cavalier before he remembered that Kirby hadn't discovered what Jimmy had just then, had already known it for who knew how long. With time, Jimmy figured, he'd probably feel free to crack wise about it, too. Right then, though, the impact of the revelation had left him feeling irrational, and this new part of him felt fragile in its newness, as though it were some physical, delicate thing he could tip over and destroy if he didn't treat it carefully enough.

"Well, see you around, Hopkins." Kirby straightened, threw his duffel bag over his shoulder, slipped out of sight behind the island of lockers. Jimmy heard his footsteps echo out toward the exit and into the hall. "Oh, and Hopkins?" he called from doorway.

"If you ever come within five feet of me again, I'll put you in the fucking ground."

Anyone observing Jimmy as he finished installing the trap in Earnest's locker wouldn't have detected a tremor in his hands, but Jimmy felt like he was going to explode. Tremors ran through him, so powerful and frequent that he almost mistook the sensation for fear. _Relax moron,_ he told himself. _What are you freaking out about?_

But no, it wasn't fear, he realized. His heart was beating hard, his ears burned. He was _excited._ He kept thinking about what Kirby said— _it's never the ones you expect, is it?_ —and of that new fragile part of him that was growing sturdier by the minute. He was _excited_ by the prospect of this part of him, of what this meant. And part of him, inexplicably, was excited that Kirby was aware of it—whether either of them liked it or not, they had become connected by virtue of Jimmy's revelation alone.

Back in his dorm later that night he found himself unable to sleep. His mind swam with thoughts of Kirby's words, and, embarrassingly, of Kirby's strong grip, and the way he had looked with his hair all wet and pushed back.

 _What the hell is wrong with you? Do you have a little schoolboy crush on Kirby?_ Jimmy thought, and and the moment he thought the words _crush_ and _Kirby_ together it became so blindingly obvious to himself that he had to bury his face in his pillow even though there was no one around to see the color flood his cheeks.


	3. Reckoner

_**WINTER, 2007**_ _ **(cont'd**_ _ **)  
**_ _ **Chapter 3**_

 _"You are not to blame for bittersweet distractors."  
_ Radiohead, "Reckoner" - _In Rainbows,_ 2007

* * *

It seems almost unnecessary to preface that when Jimmy ran into Kirby a few weeks later for the third and final time, he was in the middle of ruining someone's day.

This time it was all him. He had hidden in the tree over the field and used Ted Thompson as a practice target. Usually he was able to scramble out of the tree and into the back road behind the observatory in time, but he'd overestimated his ability to safely jump from a tree branch slicked by freezing rain, and he'd fallen backwards out of the tree, the wind knocked squarely out of him. By the time he was able to scramble to his feet, Ted, Bo, and Dan were upon him. He dodged a reaching arm and sprinted up the stadium stairs, taking them three at a time. He'd have to run all the way out to the Vale before they gave up pursuit…

A voice cut through the slurry of threats coming from behind him. "I got him!" Jimmy hazarded a glance behind him.

Kirby pushed out from behind Dan, running at full tilt. Jimmy felt a confusing sensation, a clawing excitement, rip through him. He felt as though his heart had sank and leaped into his throat at the same time. Kirby was _fast,_ had always been fast, and he was outstripping the others and gaining on Jimmy. Jimmy couldn't see his face clearly from his brief glance, but that was all he needed to know that Kirby was out for blood.

Jimmy bolted.

It wasn't something Jimmy really liked to admit, because he certainly got enough of them at Bullworth without any advertisement, and because he knew it didn't do much for his image, but Jimmy _loved_ a good chase. There was something about being really _pursued,_ about knowing that he was done for if he let up for even a moment, that was matched by little else. He wouldn't try to rationalize it until years later, when he would figure that it was just another kind of arrogance—few people could say they were wanted in as many different manners as he could.

He sprinted out from the athletic grounds, up the steps and through the square, and toward the main building. He made rightward toward the library, but at the last second spotted one of the rear entrances to the main building propped open, and broke left, leaping up the steps and into the building proper.

It was just after 1:00 in the afternoon and classes were in session, so the halls were, thankfully, empty. He could hear footsteps echoing up the halls behind him—his pursuers had figured out his detour and were still in rapid pursuit. Jimmy sprinted behind the foyer stairs and into the school's east wing. Taking a chance, he ran to the janitor's closet, found it mercifully unlocked, and descended into the school's underbelly. His detour hadn't shaken them off, but if he could get to the outer maintenance door via the basement, he could make it to the parking lot and it'd be smooth sailing from there.

There was just one small problem, as he quickly discovered. He rounded a corner, expecting an open doorway, and nearly slammed into a solid barrier of wood. Sometime since he was last down there, someone had shut one of the automated antechamber doors.

Jimmy lurched to a stop, the sudden halt in momentum throwing him forward. "Shit," he said, catching himself on the door. He lowered himself against it, chest heaving as he struggled to get his breathing back to normal. Jimmy wasn't a quitter, but at the same time, he could recognize when the chips were irretrievably down and knew there wasn't much he could do but wait and hope for the best.

A single set of footsteps echoed down the basement after him, growing louder as they approached. Kirby turned the corner, alone, staggering to a stop when he saw Jimmy slumped against the wall. He held a hand over his diaphragm, gasping for breath. They looked at each other for a moment.

Kirby turned back the way he'd come, looking up the staircase toward the janitor's closet. It was quiet, and Jimmy knew he was making sure they hadn't been followed. And then, to Jimmy's surprise—along with some other strange fervor he was afraid to acknowledge—Kirby sauntered over to where Jimmy sat and lowered himself next to him.

They sat in silence, save for the sound of both their breathing gradually slowing. Jimmy was tense, invariably aware of Kirby's presence beside him, barely a foot away. New ground had just been breached, though what the ground led to or what the breach meant, he wasn't sure he understood.

It was Kirby that finally broke the relative silence, after a few minutes.

"You're making things pretty tough for me, here," he said quietly.

Jimmy just watched him, waited for him to continue.

"I'm trying to be...good."

"Good?" Jimmy said. " _You?_ "

"Good, like..." Kirby began. He stared at a spot on the ground between them, as though the words he was looking for might fold up from the concrete if he willed it hard enough. "I broke up with Trent. I'm done with all that. Or, I thought I was. But now," he said, finally looking at Jimmy, "I know about _you_."

Oh.

For the first time, Jimmy found himself appreciating a person's lack of vocabulary, if only because it inhibited them from mincing words. He also found he had no idea what to say or do. This was unfamiliar territory. Several options stuck out in his mind. He could run away, just get up and sprint back up and out of the basement the way he'd come, but he knew he didn't want to do that. His heart was hammering. _Just do what you want,_ he thought. So he did.

He felt for Kirby's hand and held it. For some reason he expected it to be cold and soft like the girls' hands he'd held before, but it was warm and callused, and heavy. Kirby didn't look away. He didn't pull away.

Kirby nudged closer to him, reaching for his face. Jimmy felt a little thrill that he'd even managed to get this far, and was content to remain still and let things happen, to let Kirby's fingers fall on his freckled cheekbones, down to his jaw, brushing the corner of his lip. He felt Kirby's warm palm pressed into his cheek.

And then Kirby closed that little space between them and kissed him. Just once, lips pressing into Jimmy's warm mouth, and then no more.

The moment Kirby's lips left his, he knew it wasn't enough. _It's not enough,_ he thought, _not enough to know for sure,_ because maybe there _was_ a little uncertainty left, after all. He grasped for Kirby, curled his fingers around the collar of Kirby's shirt. He only meant to steady them both so he could pull close for another kiss, but he felt Kirby resisting, felt those warm hands wrap around his wrists and pull, and Jimmy remembered as his patience waned why he wasn't used to being cautious, and why he never denied himself anything he truly wanted for long. With one swift motion, he twisted his body so his back was no longer against the wall, and he fell to the floor, pulling Kirby on top of him.

Kirby, for all intents and purposes, had the upper hand, had Jimmy beneath him and pinned between his knees. But he was at Jimmy's mercy all the same.

He pulled Kirby down, and Kirby melted, flowed down atop him, his hands releasing Jimmy's wrists and falling to the floor at either side of Jimmy's head, and his lips met Jimmy's with an intensity that had been absent before. It wasn't too unlike any kiss he'd had with a girl, aside from the smell of skin and sweat registering a little bit differently to him, but there was a thrill of certainty, of all remaining doubt crumbling away. _I do want this, I do get it,_ he thought again and again, and with each repetition his fervor unfolded.

It was the bell that finally broke them apart, the bell that signaled the letting out of the last class of the day. Jimmy couldn't keep Kirby from pulling away that time, straightening his shirt and smoothing his hair down. He looked back toward the exit. He opened his mouth, looking stuck on what to say.

"I'll…see you around," he said finally, awkwardly.

Jimmy nodded, lips parted. "Uh huh." And Kirby was gone.

Jimmy sat alone in the basement for a long time, and when he finally left through the outer exit the sun was already low, rays long and red, signaling the approaching nightfall. That night and many nights after he'd have twisting, restless dreams full of grasping hands and sturdy hipbones, and the smell of skin throughout, and he'd fantasize about what he would do to Kirby the next time he got him alone. But his chances had run through, whether he knew it or not. Winter would turn to spring, then spring to summer, and then a full year would pass after that, and he and Kirby would still have unfinished business between them. Kirby would graduate and head off to a university 500 miles away and that would be the last Jimmy saw of him. It's a hard lesson, learning that sometimes things aren't as simple as a closed door leading to an open one. Sometimes things are just over. That was a lesson Jimmy would have to learn again and again.


	4. Fly Trapped in a Jar (Fall 2007)

_**FALL**_ _ **, 2007  
**_ _ **Chapter 4**_

 _"One wing isn't even enough, it isn't even enough, it isn't even enough to leave!"  
_ Modest Mouse, "Fly Trapped in a Jar" _\- We Were Dead Before the Ship Even Sank,_ 2007

* * *

The seats in Pete's secondhand Jeep Cherokee were torn and uncomfortable, and the forest green paint had scratched off the exterior in spots, and it was a toss-up on a good day as to whether or not the thing would even start, but Pete loved it, and ever since he'd received it for his birthday that summer, he'd been sure to let Jimmy know it.

"Can we please listen to something else?"

"You don't like The Beach Boys?" Pete asked.

"Uh, I was _neutral_ on The Beach Boys," Jimmy replied. "But that was several car rides ago."

"I don't have any other tapes."

"Oh my god." Jimmy leaned his head against the passenger seat. Mid-afternoon sunlight streamed into the vehicle, turning the dashboard and the trees lining the highway outside golden.

"I gave you a blank tape, dude, we could be listening to anything you want right now…" Pete said.

"I'm not making you a fucking mixtape!"

"Then don't complain!" Pete said sharply. Jimmy could think of a few ways to respond to that, but he reigned his temper in. He knew that visiting Gary made Pete restless. It made them both restless.

The highway outside whipped by. The sky was bright and crisp but the air was still warm, that perfect period of autumn that was right in between summer and winter. Their destination—"Good Samaritan Psychiatric Center and Inpatient Services"— was a little under three hours away from Bullworth. It was a significant distance further than Happy Volts, but Jimmy couldn't really complain about the trip; it was definitely not a bad thing that Happy Volts had been investigated and shut down, and Jimmy had never minded long car rides besides.

He also liked having an excuse not to visit Gary as often. Not that he'd ever admit it to Pete.

The visitations had really been Pete's idea. He'd broached the topic that summer, when the excitement of having new transportation was still fresh and they were listing all the places they could go now that they had a car. Jimmy had dismissed the idea of visitation outright at first, but the idea had latched onto this brain, and after a while he came around to it. He'd insisted on ground rules; they couldn't be too friendly, and they had to call ahead of time (no dropping by unannounced, no surprises). It was a formality, a _"sorry I threw you off a building, that was a bit shitty of me, never mind that you had it coming"_ sort of deal. Jimmy didn't want or need to be Gary's friend and with no uncertainty did he let Pete know it.

Now, Pete was tapping his fingers against the steering wheel to "Wouldn't It Be Nice", looking content. He'd gotten past the initial giddiness of driving on his own, but it still seemed to surface now and again, especially on beautiful days like this.

"Hey, unlock my window," Jimmy said.

"I've got the air going," Pete pointed out. He spotted the carton of Lucky Strikes in Jimmy's hand. "Not in my car."

"Come on, Petey, I'm dying."

Pete knew Jimmy would smoke whether the window was open or not, and Jimmy knew he knew. "Fine…" The window mechanism clunked. Jimmy put his window down and lit a cigarette.

"Hurry, it's getting cold."

"Mm," Jimmy said absently. He leaned against the door, head angled out the window to exhale. He was wearing just jeans and a t-shirt, and the quickly cooling air chilled him. His hair had grown out a little but it wasn't enough to protect his scalp from the rush of autumn air.

What felt like only a minute later, Jimmy's head bumped against the smooth glass of the passenger window as the Jeep gently rolled over a speed bump. They were moving slowly; Jimmy sat up, slowly adjusting to wakefulness, and saw the low white main building of Good Samaritan coming into view as the Jeep climbed the long side road to the parking lot.

"Did you close this?" he asked, slurring a little as he rubbed his head where it had bumped the window.

"Yeah. You fell asleep with a cigarette in your hand and I had to pull over to put it out." Pete jerked his thumb toward the back seat. "Grab that box out of the back, wouldya?"

"Uh, yeah," Jimmy said. There was a small box wrapped in newspaper in the backseat that he'd failed to notice before then, about the size of a textbook. "What is this?"

"You'll see," Pete said, which Jimmy found both needlessly cryptic and slightly troubling.

They pulled into the front row of parking spaces. The lot was soberingly empty for a weekend. Pete put the car in park. "You ready?"

They'd been before, and the psychiatric center's patient base was small enough that the staff knew them by name. The receptionist pointed them toward the sign-in sheet. Getting in and out of the psychiatric center for visitation was a bit of an ordeal, and although Jimmy knew it was just standard procedure to protect the patients he couldn't help but feel like he was visiting a prisoner. The receptionist handed them both visitor badges, a bright sticker displaying the date smoothed across it. Pete looked a bit panicked when the receptionist asked him to surrender the mystery package for inspection.

"Shit, I forgot," he said sheepishly.

"It's alright. It's for his birthday, right?"

"Yep," Pete said, glancing at Jimmy.

"I think that's everything," she continued. "If you wait in the visitation room, I'll bring him out. And by the way," she added as she headed in the direction of the patient rooms, "it's really kind of you to visit on his birthday. Some people are practically abandoned during inpatient. It's good for them to be remembered."

"Uh-huh," Jimmy said as politely as he could manage. He waited until the receptionist was out of sight, then grabbed Pete's arm.

"Jimmy, you're hurting me."

"Did you bring me here because it's his birthday?"

"Well…yeah," Pete answered. He looked visibly uncomfortable.

"I said _no friend shit_."

"I know!"

"Then why—"

Pete jerked his arm out of Jimmy's grasp. "I feel bad for him, okay? It's why I do anything for him anymore. I don't really want to see him either, but I can't help it. I just feel bad."

"You could have told me ahead of time."

"Then you wouldn't have come."

"For fucks sake." Jimmy sighed, knowing Pete was right and feeling unable to come up with a suitable argument. For all Pete's faults, Jimmy couldn't find it in himself to be angry at someone for who they chose to pity. If anyone deserved pity, it was pathetic, pitiful Gary.

Then, as if sensing Jimmy's fading resolve, Pete said, "I can't leave him alone. I _hated_ being left alone all the time." And he'd won.

He looked around at the visitation room, which was small but well-lit, with tall windows looking out at the grounds and parking lot, tall, modern reading lamps, and soft, inviting armchairs. Definitely nicer than Happy Volts. He figured, if he ever went crazy or whatever it was you had to do to get thrown into a loony bin, that he wouldn't mind getting thrown into this one.

Then, from the doorway they'd come through: "Hey, nerds." Jimmy and Pete both turned to look.

Every time Jimmy saw Gary, he expected him to be wearing a big green hospital gown, like they had at Happy Volts, or plain white clothing, freed of loose threads or drawstrings so that they might be as safe and unassuming as the rest of the facility. But Gary wore a green t-shirt and blue jeans (and, Jimmy noted, olive-colored canvas Vans, the slip-on kind—he'd been right about string being forbidden to inpatients), and everything else about him was just the same.

They sat in relative silence in the visitation room for a moment. Gary's foot tapped idly, silently, the jittery movement striking Jimmy as oddly spider-like. They were the only ones there.

"I can't believe you losers actually came to visit me on my birthday," Gary finally said. He was smirking a little, hinting at his smile's full, shit-eating potential.

"It was Pete's idea."

"I believe it," Gary said easily.

"I got you something," Pete said. "It's, uh…" He hesitated, looking suddenly embarrassed. "It's just a book about World War II history. Like, Normandy and Dunkirk and all that. You probably already know everything about those ones, but I saw it at the bookstore and I remembered you said you liked it…"

"That's actually cool," Gary said, sounding pleasantly surprised. "Where is it?"

"With reception."

Gary laughed. "Yeah, I'm never gonna get it then. They probably don't want me looking at anything violent."

There was another bout of silence, par for the course for these visitations.

"You seem relaxed," Jimmy tried.

"Yeah, they've got me on quite the cocktail," Gary said, never one to beat around the bush. "Doesn't change anything, but it does enough. But enough about all that." Gary got a horribly familiar, devious expression on his face. "I wanna know about _you_ ," he began, looking right at Jimmy, "and your little _boyfriend._ "

"I don't know what you mean," Jimmy said, possibly a little bit too coolly.

"Don't be coy with me, Jim. I know things. Even here, I have ears everywhere."

"What?" Jimmy said. "How?"

"I'm kidding, you freak. Pete let it slip last time he called me."

"Pete!"

Pete looked both guilty and scandalized. "Thanks a bunch, Gary."

Jimmy fell back against his chair, throwing his arms up in defeat. "Awesome. Who else did you tell, Pete?"

"Just Gary, I swear," Pete insisted. Pete was a bad liar and everyone present knew it, including Pete himself, and Jimmy relaxed a little.

"So?" Gary said.

"So what?"

"What's it like dating a prep kid?"

"There's nothing to tell," Jimmy said, which wasn't entirely evasion.

"There _has_ to be," Gary said. "Does he buy you things? Does he tell you what to wear?"

"Not really. I don't let him."

"Have you been in his house?"

"Not…not yet." Jimmy was beginning to remember why he'd decided to keep this part of his life relatively private in the first place.

"Oooh, have you guys _done it_ yet?" Gary asked, voice brimming with the all the scandal of playground gossip.

 _If I'm going to be candid, may as well go all the way,_ Jimmy thought. "Nope."

"Wait, really? Hasn't it been like, a month?"

"Two."

"So let me get this straight," Gary said. "You're dating a prep, you're dating the Vendome kid on top of that, you don't let him spend any amount of his innumerable riches on you…and you're not even getting _laid_?" He ticked the points off on his fingers as he went. "Jimmy, I knew you were sexually confused, but this…"

"That's probably the least confusing part about it."

"But why? How?" Gary asked, brow furrowing. It occurred to Jimmy that Gary's prying had gone beyond the usual ribbing and had progressed to genuine confusion. Pete was eyeing him as well—probably hoping for the explanation Jimmy had also failed to give him the many times he'd pried himself.

"I dunno," Jimmy said, evading. "I started boxing more, and we started hanging out." He grasped for an appropriate platitude. "…we just clicked, you know?"

"Ooh, romantic," Gary said, looking disgusted by the cliche.

"It _is_ romantic," Pete said. "In like, a cool way," he added, when Jimmy looked nonplussed.

"I don't get it, Jim," Gary said. "He's so _prissy_. He nearly cried one time during Bio because he got a bit of dogfish entrails on his shirt."

"That's disgusting, though," Jimmy pointed out.

Gary continued on, ignoring him. "He's full of himself. What do you see in him? And don't say anything lame, like his eyes are blue as the fucking sky or something like that."

Jimmy bit back the urge to mention that Gord's eyes were, in fact, brown. As for what he saw in Gord, he knew the _real_ answer—he hadn't been lying about how much time he and Gord spent boxing. From the balcony outside the changing room one day that summer, he'd watched Gord in the ring, observed the lean muscle in his arms and shoulders, and the way his sweat-dampened hair fell into his eyes when he pulled off his headgear. Days later, as he worked the bag very early in the morning in what he thought was an empty gym, Gord had come up behind him and wordlessly corrected his posture. Fingers warm through the fabric of Jimmy's shirt, he'd looked up, caught Jimmy staring back at him, and smiled knowingly—and just like that, Jimmy was enamored.

"I can't tell you guys _everything,_ " Jimmy said, hoping that the heat he felt in only recalling the memory hadn't shown on his face.

"Ugh." Gary leaned back in his chair again, hands folded on his stomach. "You're lucky I don't have the energy for this shit right now, or I'd really put you through the third degree. I'm talking Guantanamo Bay levels of interrogation." he said. His hands drifted absently to one of the thin, ridged scars on his forearm. He looked up, caught Jimmy watching him. "Some of the other inmates…"—he closed his eyes, shook his head—"… _patients_ think they're self-inflicted."

"You set 'em straight?" Pete asked.

"Sometimes. Depends on my mood." He looked very deliberately at Jimmy. "Sometimes I play along with the whole helpless wimp routine. Other times I tell them my friend pushed me off a fucking roof. I'm not sure which they think is more pathetic—being emo or being betrayed."

The mood in the room changed so quickly it might've given someone unaccustomed to Gary's moods a case of whiplash. Jimmy met his eyes easily. "We can have a long conversation about betrayal. If you _really_ want to."

"Guys…" Pete said.

"Actually, they definitely think being betrayed is worse. I can tell. They pity me when I tell them. And you wanna know why?" Gary asked, sitting up. His tone had adopted a familiar danger, and Jimmy was ready for him. But before he had the chance to retort, Pete mad a low, impatient, disgusted sound.

" _What?_ " Gary asked, a little too loudly. One of the staff members, standing near the doorway, looked in their direction.

"I am _not_ dealing with this. I can't. I will walk right out the door and drive away if you guys fight. I mean it." He said all this with an air of flat disappointment, and Jimmy could tell he did mean it. "I didn't bring him here so you could _argue_ with him. You really want us to leave? We can leave whenever you want."

Gary looked at Pete, who only stared back, raising his eyebrows a little as if to say, _Well? What'll it be?_ And then something that Jimmy couldn't possibly know—maybe exhaustion, maybe his meds, maybe some private pact known only to Gary and Pete—compelled him to back down.

"I know," he said. "I don't want to argue either."

The lead up to his apology was a visible struggle. "…I'm sorry."

"I'm sorry, too," Jimmy said. He didn't add that it was Pete he was truly apologizing to. "I egged you on."

"Hmm." He covered his eyes with his hands and exhaled, and for a moment Jimmy could read the weariness on his face, could almost grasp what the banality of this regulated, spotless, shoelace-free existence was doing to him. Suddenly Jimmy wanted to know, more than anything, _when are you getting out of here?_ But he knew, sometimes, when to keep his mouth shut.

Visiting hours wound to a close, and the staff came into the visitation room to usher Pete and Jimmy out.

"Hey, Jim?" Gary asked before they could whisk him away.

"Yes?" Jimmy couldn't read his tone, braced himself for the worst.

"At least get Gord to suck your dick, okay?"


	5. 1234

_**FALL, 2007 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 5**_

 _"Sleepless long nights, that is what my youth was for."  
_ Feist, "1234" - _The Reminder_ , 2007

* * *

The day after Gary's birthday, he found himself still awake by five in the morning, unable to sleep. He lay in bed listening to the relative quiet in the dorms (though he couldn't truthfully say that the boys' dorms were ever totally quiet). He'd been given a new room at the start of the new year, a little smaller than his old one and a floor up, and all his things he'd accumulated during his stay which had made his old room feel pleasantly cluttered suddenly felt suffocating and innumerable.

He rolled onto his side, shut his eyes. Opened them. _You have Civics in the morning_ , he told himself. _Sleep, idiot_. There was really no use pushing it. He could think of a few things to help him sleep, and the first few that came to mind—namely, sleeping pills and jerking off—were out of the question, if only because he didn't _have_ any sleeping pills, and he was too cold and uncomfortable to get himself off right then.

The third option was, of course, violence. Not quite as elegant, but it was doable, and pretty alluring in its own right.

It had been a few months since Jimmy had had any real need to beat the shit out of someone. He couldn't say he missed it, necessarily—he definitely appreciated being able to walk around town and campus without glancing over his shoulder every minute or so. But he also couldn't deny that there was a certain relief brought by mindless aggression that was matched by little else, and so it only made sense that his junior year at Bullworth, he had spent more and more time blowing off steam at the Glass Jaw in the Vale as his workload at school increased, and his overall stress with it.

Even if he fell asleep right then, were two or three hours of sleep really worth it? He lay in bed for another minute or two, listening to his clock tick, before he sighed, rolled out of bed, and pulled on his sweats.

The whirring of his bike and the rush of the occasional passing car were the only ambiance as he crossed the overpass. Glass Jaw, naturally, was empty. Sure, it wasn't technically _open_ that early either, but Jimmy liked coming early, and although he didn't have a set of keys to the building, a single unlatched window in one of the storage rooms had proved an easy workaround to that. He didn't have the keys to the switch box either, only the generator lights, and had quickly grown accustomed to the relative darkness in the gym pre-hours. He changed, felt no need to bother warming up, went right to the bag. He had been taking tips, practicing his technique with Bif, but right then he just wanted to move his arms till they burned, style be damned.

He usually put music on, but he forgot that day. Even so, he still proved remarkably easy to sneak up on.

"BOO."

Jimmy spun, arm swinging, but the hook was weak, already dog tired from his workout by then, and the interloper grabbed him easily.

"Gord!"

"Sorry," Gord said, wrapping his arms around Jimmy's neck. He was smiling wickedly. Even in the dim light, Jimmy could see that he looked incredible.

"Go to hell," Jimmy said, feigning a grievance that was already fading. His lips hinted at a withheld smile, implicating him.

"You don't forgive me?" Gord asked, in his elevated, practiced way.

"Not yet," Jimmy said, and pulled him in for a kiss. Within moments, their intimacy had rapidly deepened. Gord's hands fell on Jimmy's hips. Jimmy pulled his gloves off, pushed his fingers into Gord's hair. Gord put his lips on Jimmy's neck.

"Wait, wait," Jimmy said. "At least let me shower or something. I'm all dirty."

"I like dirty," Gord said into his neck. He wrapped his arms around Jimmy and pulled him into an embrace. "And in any case, I don't have time to wait for you to shower."

"You don't?"

"No, I have a committee meeting, remember?" Gord was on the school dance committee, a detail Jimmy usually forgot until it resurfaced in conversation. The committee met unreasonably early, something Jimmy found concerning—having a pack of sleep-deprived teenagers deciding the fate of a school dance was nothing short of dangerous in his mind. "I'm just here to get my polo. I left it in my locker and I don't want it mildewing."

"Quit talking about mildew," Jimmy said, though he only said it to tease—he didn't really care what Gord said, as long as it kept his lips moving against Jimmy's neck. He slipped his fingers under the hem of Gord's shirt. "Skip your meeting."

"Jimmy…" Gord's tone was a warning. Jimmy thought of what Gary had said the day before, hated himself for taking anything Gary said seriously. But he'd had a point, in some way, and all the times Jimmy had shoved that particular insecurity under the rug had only enabled it to fester. Jimmy didn't believe in letting things fester for long.

The truth was, in all its candid glory, that every time matters progressed, every time hands started reaching below waistbands and groping against zippers, Gord choked. He always reassured Jimmy as he pulled his shirt back down or his zipper back up that it wasn't his fault, but not even Jimmy was arrogant enough to escape feeling insecure about it forever. It was an argument Jimmy should have gotten out of the way, but alright, maybe a _little_ festering is harmless, and he liked having someone to regularly make out with, especially someone as hot as Gord. Did he really want some argument about nothing ruining that?

But it wasn't really nothing. It would come to a head soon enough.

"They're expecting me, Jimmy. Really."

That little ugly insecurity reared its head and Jimmy thought, _do you even like me,_ almost out of nowhere, and he hated that thought and the possible consequences of saying it out loud so much that he let go of Gord immediately. "Okay."

"Okay," Gord said. He kissed Jimmy on the forehead, a gesture of sexless intimacy with which Jimmy was still unaccustomed, and then just like that was gone, and Jimmy was left reeling.

 _Where did that come from, Jimmy?_ He thought. _Cut that shit out_. But insecurities are rarely so easy to dispel, and it followed him up to the change rooms like a squeaking balloon. He was still thinking about it as he got in the shower, leaning his head against the wall.

* * *

The first time he and Gord hung out after they decided they were a couple was in August. They were stretched on the roof of the Happy Diner, Gord's head resting on Jimmy's stomach and one of Gord's overpriced cigarettes shared between them. It was nighttime, dark and warm, the sky a deep velvety blue.

"When did you realize you liked me?" Gord had asked.

"Um," Jimmy said. His silenced stretched on just a little too long—just long enough for Gord to recognize his hesitance as embarrassment.

"Aww," Gord said.

"Shut up."

"Are you being shy, Jimmy?"

"Shut _up._ " Jimmy _was_ feeling particularly shy, something he didn't feel very often at all, mostly because he didn't particularly like it. "I guess it was when I first watched you box. Against Bif."

"When? During the tournament?"

Jimmy released a plume of smoke into the air. "Mhmm. You were a lot better than I thought you'd be."

"He absolutely trounced me."

 _Trounced_ , Jimmy thought. "Didn't matter. I liked seeing you all sweaty, I guess." He felt another flash of embarrassment, gritted his teeth, moved past it.

"Is that really all? That's not half as embarrassing as mine."

"Tell, then."

Gord opened his mouth, and then shut it again with a nervous giggle. "Oh, I don't think I want to anymore."

"Hey, I said mine!"

"I know," Gord said. "I guess I thought yours would be worse." He took the cigarette from Jimmy, took a long drag. He shifted his head a little, his hair ruffling against the fabric of Jimmy's t-shirt. "The first time I really felt attracted to you was when you humiliated Derby in front of everyone. Last year." He threw a hand over his mouth and laughed again, as though he could hardly believe himself.

"Holy shit," Jimmy said, and he laughed too, loud enough that he certainly could have been heard from the street below.

"Don't laugh!" Gord said, aghast.

"That's kind of kinky _._ "

"Stop. Jimmy, I'm warning you…"

"I'm sorry," Jimmy said, though he wasn't really. He settled down, and Gord took another drag from the cigarette. "Was it really for that long?"

"Yes," Gord said. "I liked you for a while. I flirted with you, too, though I don't think you really picked up on it. You were too focused on Zoe."

Jimmy didn't answer. He didn't want to think about Zoe.

"You probably don't want to think about Zoe," Gord said. Lots could be said about Gord, but for all the nearsightedness he showed when it came to issues of…pretty much anything outside his relatively small bubble, he was relatively quick on the draw when it came to picking up on nonverbal cues.

"It's alright," Jimmy said. "Water under the bridge, y'know?" Gord nodded as though he did know, and maybe he did. Everyone knew, after all, about how Zoe had started seeing an addict 6 years older than her, and her mother had found out and she'd been sent to live with her cousins 300 miles away. She had spent the entire day before she left with Jimmy. She refused to cry in front of him, or probably anyone, but he could tell a few times that day that she was only barely holding back tears. When she left he wrote her twice, and she responded once, a long letter describing her new house and school, and that was the last letter she wrote him and he hadn't heard from her since. Maybe he didn't know all the details of what had happened, but he knew enough. Regardless, when he moved into his new room in the fall, he'd thrown out all his photos but hers.

"Actually," Gord began. " _Do_ you want to talk about Zoe?"

"You wanna talk about my ex with me?" Jimmy asked, bewildered. "I'm not an expert or anything but...isn't that like...not the best topic of conversation?" Gord blinked at him. "Like, what if I asked you about Lola?"

"You already know everything there is to know about Lola," Gord answered readily. "You were pretty much there." Jimmy really couldn't argue with that, and if mentioning Jimmy's interference with Lola all those months ago had reopened old wounds on Gord's part, he didn't show it. He pulled himself up so that he was laying next to Jimmy now. "You don't have to tell me anything you don't want to," he said. Their hands were brushing.

"Well..." Jimmy felt warmth, independent of the balmy August night, prickling his skin. "There's not a whole lot to know."

They were quiet for a while. The streets rumbled with late traffic, and they could hear the last customers of the night ambling out of the restaurant below.

"I have to ask you something," Gord said. "Don't get mad."

"No promises."

"Did you ever sleep with her?"

Thank _God_ it was dark out. "That's not the kind of question you can preface with 'don't get mad,'" Jimmy said, ears burning.

" _Oh_ ," Gord said, knowingly, a little smugly. Jimmy felt a rush of irritation. What the hell did he see in this guy again? "So you _have_."

"Why does it matter?"

"It doesn't," Gord said. He rolled onto his side so that he was leaning over Jimmy. "I promise, it doesn't, I was just curious."

"Well…curiosity and cats and all that."

Gord just looked at him, ran his fingers along the stripes on Jimmy's shirt. Jimmy was familiar by now with pre-confession hesitation, and if Gord was going to embarrass personal revelations out of Jimmy, then Jimmy was going to meet him blow-for-blow.

Jimmy poked his finger into Gord's stomach. "Ye-es?" Gord shoved his hand away, but he was laughing, his brown eyes squeezing shut.

"I'm a virgin, is all," Gord said. "I wanted to know if you were one, too."

"Oh." Jimmy weighed this information and found he wasn't sure what to do with it, or if he even cared all that much. "Does it bother you that I'm not? A virgin, I mean?"

"Nope," Gord said, very fast. Jimmy gave him a look and Gord rolled his eyes. "Maybe a _little_. I think I'm envious."

"I don't follow."

"What part of what I said is confusing?" Gord asked.

"You weren't into Zoe, were you?"

"Oh, no," Gord said, with a dismissive air that bordered on patronizing. "I meant in the general sense." He paused for a moment, took a drag on the cigarette, which was dwindling rapidly, then: "What's it like?"

 _Oh, for fucks sake._ Jimmy was feeling more and more bashful as time went on and he couldn't say he was a fan of the feeling. "I dunno. It was nice. It felt good. Obviously."

"Was it…emotional, at all?"

"Yes, actually."

"Really?" Gord sounded surprised.

"Yeah, it was her last day in town." They had spent the entire day together, at her mother's house. She had showed him around, the broken pane in the window of her childhood bedroom letting in flies as they pored over the books on her shelf—an empty notebook, a half-filled photo album, collections of contemporary poetry. Her favorite play was _The Crucible_ , her copy pen-marked and dogeared. She had teased him when he admitted he'd read it the year before for school and hadn't liked it, only remembering the scene where a man was crushed to death beneath slabs of stone as he called for more weight. That had struck him at the time as one of the most badass things he'd ever read. Now, the thought of being crushed beneath cement just made him uneasy if he thought about it for too long.

Jimmy tried not to think about that night, how Zoe had pulled him down on top of her, guided his hands everywhere that he wasn't already grasping for on his own. How she'd fallen asleep in his bed and how it smelled like her long after she left. But trying not to think about something is just another form of thinking about it, and he felt a horrible, swooping rush of sadness. Like bashfulness, he hated feeling sad. He had no use for it.

"Why the hell do you want to talk about Zoe so bad?"

"I'm sorry."

"That was three months ago. I'm moving on."

"Jimmy, I said I'm sorry." Gord had taken his hand at some point. He squeezed it.

Jimmy deflated. "I know. It's alright." Gord leaned toward him, and for a minute Jimmy thought he might kiss him, but he was only reaching for the carton of cigarettes to Jimmy's other side.

"Want me to light another one?"

"No," Jimmy said. "I think I want to head home." In a moment of foresight which he promptly ignored, he realized he was probably going to get tired of Gord. Guilt folded over him like a concrete slab. _More weight_.

Jimmy's head rolled against the cooling tile of the shower wall and the slipping motion jerked him back into full lucidity. As he'd stood there reminiscing, his exhaustion had caught up with him and he had just about fallen asleep standing up. The water was running rapidly cold, and he slapped at the dial till the stream cut off, leaving him shivering, dripping. He swore and hastily toweled himself off, reached for his watch on the changing bench and flipped it upright.

It was 8:30. No way he'd make it to Civics on time. _Way to fucking be, Jimmy._

He took his time getting back to campus, and by the time he finally had his bike parked and his uniform on it was 9:15. Early enough to slip into Civics with only minimal verbal abuse, but he reasoned flimsily that he hadn't played hooky since the year began, and he was so tired he probably wouldn't even be able to focus, and anyway Civics is piss easy so who cares if he took one class off? Within moments he'd convinced himself that it wasn't worth bothering, not today.

There were a couple places around campus he could hide out and smoke in silence without any prefects playing practice cop on him. The dorms were the obvious answer, though for just that reason there was no way they'd be empty enough for his tastes. The garages were usually not patrolled, but since the majority of last year's greasers had graduated, a wave of underclassmen had stepped in to fill out their ranks. They all felt like they had something to prove, _especially_ to the Hopkins kid they'd heard so much about. Jimmy didn't know the new kids, didn't care to know them. He traded polite nods with Hal and Norton and Ricky, the only greasers left from the year before, but for the most part he stayed away from the garages except for when class demanded it of him. For the same reason, any trip through New Coventry had once again became a tiresome game; _how long will it take before the Greased Lightning-looking fucker hurling insults at him from the tenements realizes he's taunting Jimmy Hopkins?_ After a while he stopped going to New Coventry, too.

So, the garages were out. That left the athletic fields and the observatory, and he happened to know that Kirby had gym that period.

 _The observatory it is,_ Jimmy thought.

The new prefects weren't half as quick on the draw as the ones last year (no doubt helped by the fact that they answered to Pete now, who was using his new position of authority in the school with about as much impartiality as could be expected from him), and Jimmy got to the observatory without a hitch. Nobody was inside, of course; Earnest and crew would never skip class. The air inside was stagnant and cold, and the planetarium display—which was clearly once pretty incredible, each planet hurtling through space on its own little axle—was covered in dust. More openings to the outside were boarded up than not, and what little gray daylight that came peeking through in shafts was barely enough to see by. Regardless, he didn't bother hunting around for the fuse box. He never came here anyway.

He threw his bag in the middle of the room, under Saturn, drew a cigarette from the hidden pocket inside, lit it. The smoke was a like a hand smoothing his nerves, a sensation which was, of course, pleasurable, but also a little bit concerning in an amusing sort of way. He'd started off his junior year with a boyfriend and an addiction. _Way to fucking be_ , he thought again.

He sat cross legged on the floor, pulled out his notebooks. He'd finally passed the point of thinking _I'm actually doing my homework!_ every time he opened a book or put a pencil to paper by his own choosing. He had a chance, for once, in a relatively stable environment (describing Bullworth as stable elicited some pretty strong feelings in him, but he also wasn't stupid and knew he didn't get to be picky when he decided what was and wasn't a stable part of his life) to succeed, or at least catch up, and with a little help from his more academically inclined friends, he'd actually been making some narrow progress.

He passed right over his math textbook, hovered on his bio lab book before skipping over that too and grabbing instead his copy of _Brave New World_. He was feeling foggy but he could read, at least at little. He hadn't opened it since he'd bought it last spring in preparation for the coming year, and he was already a couple chapters behind.

He settled onto his back, using his backpack as a pillow. He opened _Brave New World_ , and a small folded paper fell out.

It fluttered onto his face, and he slapped at it. In the low light ( _not_ reading conditions, he realized in hindsight) he mistook it for a page from the book, the feel and weight of the paper the same. He realized as he unfolded it that it was indeed a page from a book, but a different one; it was the wrong size, the wrong shade of off-white. He sat up, dragged himself to one of the angular shafts of daylight.

Across the top of the page was printed in plain serif font, "What the Living Do." _Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days..._ He recognized it right away, of course. It was from one of Zoe's favorite books of poetry. Jimmy had never particularly liked poetry, but she'd urged him to read that book in particular and out of the ones he did read, he'd liked this one the best. She'd torn it out, for him. She must have slipped it into the book at some point, maybe even the day he'd bought it.

He didn't think he totally understood it, and as he read through it again there he was sure he still didn't. There wasn't much _to_ get from a purely interpretive standpoint, it was all pretty straightforward (possibly why he'd liked it in the first place), but there was some emotional takeaway that he felt was lost on him. That was okay, though. It could have said anything at all, for all he cared.

He flipped the paper over, the last few lines of the poem running onto the next page. The page dipped in where she'd underlined, " _I am living. I remember you."_ Whether she'd done this years earlier, feeling particularly overcome by the sentiment, or underlined it just for him, a reminder of when they'd existed together, hidden away for him to find sooner or later or never…he was struck by what seemed like a layer of Zoe's personality peeling away before his eyes. He'd already gotten to know a different aspect of Zoe those few months they'd spent together—had seen the old report cards on her refrigerator denoting her stellar grades, and all the well-worn books in her room. But this version of Zoe, who not only read books but felt them, was even overcome by them from time to time, was different and new. He felt like he'd never really met that Zoe.

Regardless of her intent, it did the trick either way. The wave of emotion passed just about as quickly as it came—but it did come.


	6. Kids

_**FALL, 2007 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 6**_

 _"I thought this wouldn't hurt a lot. I guess not."  
_ MGMT, "Kids" - _Oracular Spectacular,_ 2007

* * *

The remaining week of November passed without incident, for the most part. Jimmy kept his head down, did (most of) his homework, replied to (most of) his mother's stiffly polite letters, and hung out with Pete. The temperature continued to drop off and the daylight hours dwindled. The familiar flat gray of late autumn descended on Bullworth.

He spent a lot of time with Gord. He spent a lot of time _kissing_ Gord—a lot of time making sure Gord didn't get a chance to say anything to him; the fear that his time with Gord was rapidly running out had taken a firm hold of him, no matter how much he tried to rationalize it away, and as such he was was trying to get as much mileage out of him as he could.

They were still making an attempt to be clandestine but as the weather worsened and the rooftops became less appealing they were getting less careful, sneaking glances and careful touches in the halls, in the cafeteria, in class. Jimmy, allowing himself to abandon one avenue of discretion, started bringing Gord to his dorm room, first at night and then whenever he felt like it. If anyone saw (and of course they did), they knew better than to say anything to Jimmy's face. People will talk though, and incredibly quickly the word spread that Jimmy Hopkins and That Preppy Kid Are Fucking.

Except they weren't. The bitter irony of it all. _God dammit._

Gord was sitting cross-legged on Jimmy's bed, pen hanging from his pretty mouth, a binder open before him. Late afternoon light, pale blue and watery, filtered in through the windows, supplemented by the glow of Jimmy's desk lamp.

"The only thing we could agree on was 'snowflakes'."

Jimmy sat at his desk, chair angled to face Gord, his chem workbook open on his knee. "That's it?"

"Mhmm."

"That's not really enough to build a theme out of."

"I know. I think they've settled on it, unfortunately."

Jimmy didn't care about the Winter Formal much at all, had been too busy saving the school from internal destruction to go last year, but even he could admit that 'snowflakes' was a lazy theme. "At least it'll be easy to dress for."

"Yeah," Gord said. A beat, then; "Are you going?"

"What do you mean, _'am I going?'_ "

"I mean just what I asked."

Jimmy shrugged. "Well, we're going together, aren't we?" Just as he said it he wanted to slap himself. Gord looked at the ceiling, as though willing the Lord to smite his boyfriend, or at least put a little sense into him.

"Jimmy, if you go at all, you should go with a _girl_."

"Yeah. I got that." He also looked at the ceiling, though only to avoid Gord's gaze. Some of his old schools had turned same-sex couples away at the door. He wasn't sure if Bullworth did that, but he didn't think he had the energy to find out. "It's not like it's really a secret anymore," he added.

"I'd rather play it safe," Gord said.

"Who knows on your end? Like, definitely knows?" Jimmy asked.

"Just Derby and Pinky. Though everyone else suspects."

 _Figures._ "What do they think?"

"Well, Pinky's a romantic at heart, I think she finds our whole situation..." he waved his hands vaguely. " _Fanciful_."

"And Derby?"

"Disturbed by the thought of dating a poor person but otherwise unconcerned," Gord said lightly.

"I'm not—" Jimmy began, but decided that was a disagreement for another day. "It could be worse, I guess. Those two, plus Pete and Gary..." Though, he supposed it didn't really matter who knew the actual truth and who didn't. Rumors were king at Bullworth. The facts behind them didn't matter so much.

Gord straightened, stretched, spine popping like a glow stick. " _God,_ I wish it didn't have to be this complicated."

"It doesn't," Jimmy answered.

"That's not—"

"I dunno about you, but I'm not ashamed."

"Yes, I'm well aware," Gord said quickly. He sounded like he was trying not to sound irritable. "I'm not ashamed either," he added, but Jimmy wasn't entirely convinced. "I just don't want the attention. Especially now. I don't have time for it. That's all I meant."

"Sure," Jimmy said. Gord looked at him. "No, I mean...me too. Really."

Gord didn't say anything, just cleared his things into his backpack, tossed it over the side of the bed, laid back on Jimmy's hastily made bed.

"I'm sorry," Jimmy said, just as Gord said; "Come here."

Jimmy went, laying beside Gord. Pure muscle memory guided his hand toward Gord, who pushed a carton of cigarettes into his palm. He rolled onto his side, watching Jimmy fumble with his lighter.

"What would you do if we could just be open about it?" Gord asked. "What's the first thing you would do?"

Jimmy fitted the cigarette between his lips, already smiling impishly. "I'd show you off, of course."

Gord snorted. "I show _myself_ off.".

 _Can't argue with that._ Jimmy paused, considering. "I think just holding your hand whenever I want would be okay."

"Are you trying to seduce me?"

"Maybe a little," Jimmy said, reaching for his hand now, squeezing it. "But that _is_ my real answer."

Gord looked at him. That was another minor milestone of intimacy to which Jimmy was unaccustomed—the act of staring into someone's eyes with nothing (or at least, very little) between them. Gord plucked the cigarette from Jimmy's fingers, put it out on the makeshift lid-turned-ashtray on Jimmy's bedside table. Jimmy thought, _what a waste_ , but circumstances quickly smothered the thought.

Maybe it was the weather, and the cold in particular, or maybe it was the mid-semester stress, but Gord was insatiable. Within moments, their intimacy had markedly progressed. The weight of Gord above him, the heat of his tongue and his lips, and the little sound he made when Jimmy slipped his hands into his hair, had Jimmy wanting him badly, maybe worse than he'd ever had. His hands slid down Gord's chest, to where his hips were trapped on either side by Gord's legs.

A few things happened then, pretty much at once.

He unzipped Gord, slipped his hand beneath the waistband of his slacks, and found him sensationally erect. Gord ducked his head, his lips brushing against Jimmy's neck, and at Jimmy's touch a sound escaped him, a choked and unmistakable noise of arousal. And Pete Kowalski, holding a textbook under his arm and a Mountain Dew in his hand, threw Jimmy's door open, walked right into his bedroom, and saw them, and froze.

"Oh," Pete said.

"Fuck," Jimmy said.

" _Shit._ " Gord leaped up, had his pants zipped and his backpack shouldered so quickly that Jimmy barely had time to register it.

"Gord, it's—you don't have to— _it's just Pete!_ "

Gord paused for only a second at the door. His hair was a mess. "See you round, Jimmy," he said too easily, yanking the door shut behind him when he went.

Jimmy threw himself back onto the bed, pulled his pillow over his face, and shouted into it, before throwing it aside and settling into the deeply uncomfortable silence that followed.

Pete finally spoke. "Sorry, Jimmy."

Jimmy tried to be angry, couldn't. "It's fine. I walk right into your room all the time."

"I'm single though," Pete pointed out.

"That was me throwing you a bone, Pete."

"Oh," Pete said again. He sat carefully at the foot of Jimmy's bed. The room still smelled like Gord's aftershave. He was sure Pete could smell it, too.

More silence, then; "We wouldn't have gotten far."

"No?"

"Nope. Never do." The sound Gord had made kept replaying in his ear. As much as Jimmy loved being needlessly confrontational, he had never seen much use for it in any domestic sense. But he was allowing himself to overthink things for once and he quickly concluded that the next time he saw Gord, he was going to have to _talk_ to him, properly, and finally smooth out that little anxiety standing between them.

Pete didn't question him, just said, "Do you want to climb on the garage roof and drop stuff on the greasers?"

Pete knew him too well. He was glad someone did. He got out of bed, picked the largely-intact cigarette out of the ashtray, and put on his coat.

* * *

Gord beat him to the punch. When they returned to Jimmy's room that night to squeeze some studying in, Pete nearly slipped on a folded piece of paper that had been shoved under Jimmy's door.

 _We should really talk. Pool roof 11:00_. It was written on heavy stationery stamped VENDOME in gold block letters. His mind made a connection between the people he ended up with and their tendency to communicate to him via stealthily placed pieces of paper. He waved the thought away.

"That sounds ominous," Pete said.

"It does," Jimmy agreed.

He looked at the time. It was only 9:50, which gave him just over an hour to prepare, though he wasn't certain what kind of preparation could possibly be done. How do you prepare for a difficult conversation?

"I wish I could give you some advice, buddy," Pete said. He pulled off his beanie and down jacket, tossed them aside. "I know even less than you do."

"I don't think I want to talk about it," Jimmy said, throwing his coat off. "Let's just study."

Studying, Jimmy was discovering more and more that year, was an excellent distraction from pretty much anything. Latin roots were on the docket that night, for English class. Latin came easily to Pete, not so much for Jimmy, and the practice was really more for his sake. Even on a good night, he would've had a hard time memorizing the roots and their meanings. Jimmy sat on his bed, Pete at his desk, vocab sheet in hand, quizzing him.

"Circum?"

"Around."

"Inter?"

"...within? Oh, wait, _between_. 'Intra' is within."

"Scrib?"

"To write."

"Contra?"

"I think me and Gord are gonna break up."

Pete blinked, mouth hanging open stupidly. He lowered the sheet. "Uh...okay."

"Yeah," Jimmy reaffirmed, for no reason.

"Well, don't get ahead of yourself, man," Pete said, but already Jimmy felt as though he'd sabotaged himself, or at least the part of himself that irrationally believed that speaking a fear out loud had the power to make it real.

"You wanna keep going?" Pete asked.

"With Gord?"

"The _quiz_."

"Oh. Uh...no." Jimmy looked at the clock, where his eyes had been flickering for the past half hour. "I'm just gonna go now."

"This early?"

"Yeah, I'll wait for him there. May as well go before curfew starts."

Pete shrugged. "Cool," he said, but Jimmy was already pulling on his coat and halfway out the door. Behind him, he heard Pete call after him: "Good luck!"

It was bitingly cold outside, cold enough that Jimmy's ears started to sting within minutes and he found himself wishing he'd worn a hat. Nobody wanted to be out in the cold, and campus was blissfully quiet. He made it to the courts without issue, and as he pulled his sleeves up over his hands to protect his skin from the ice-cold rungs of the roof-access ladder, the door to the pool building creaked open. Someone slipped out from within into the cold, braced against the night air. In the dark Jimmy misread the figure, and his heart leaped into his throat, but the outdoor light landed on a head of red hair and Jimmy relaxed. Dan Wilson nodded at Jimmy, said, "Fuckin' freezing," and headed northward toward the main building. Jimmy exhaled, relieved. If he had run into Kirby right then after so successfully avoiding him that year, he figured he could have been forgiven for assuming that his luck had simply run out for the rest of the night, if not the rest of the year, if not the rest of his life.

He pulled himself carefully up the two access ladders, sleeves slipping on the cold metal, and found Gord already there.

He was sitting huddled against the brick ledge in the center of the roof, almost unrecognizable with a heavy hooded coat over his usual sweater.

"You're early," Jimmy said.

" _You're_ early." Gord patted the roof next to him. Jimmy went to him.

A cigarette was lit, and a lungful of smoke drawn each. Their little ritual was out of the way, and now someone _had_ to talk.

Jimmy shivered. Gord noticed, and laughed under his breath. "Guess we should hurry up and get this over with, huh?"

"Mhm," Jimmy breathed. He had his questions lined up like bottle rockets, ready to fire off if he could just summon the balls to pull the trigger. _Just say what you want_.

"What were you thinking when I went for your cock?"

Gord was good about this kind of thing when it was just the two of them, and he didn't react much, just rolled the cigarette in his fingers. "Well, I wanted to have sex with you, of course."

A part of him, unreasonable bordering on absurd, felt relieved. He knew Gord wanted him, _everyone_ wanted him. There was no reason to feel insecure about that particular detail. And yet he had.

"How badly?"

"Pretty badly. I had to get myself off afterwards." He said this without a trace of embarrassment.

"And you thought about me?"

"I think about you pretty much anytime my hand is anywhere near my penis."

Jimmy shifted, knew this would not be easy. "Just me?"

"Are you jealous?"

"Not jealous. Just curious."

Gord looked at him, evidently deciding he believed him. "Not just you. Lola, too. And Mandy. Some others. But mostly, of course, just you. You easily dominate my fantasies."

 _Stop, idiot,_ Jimmy thought, but he plowed ahead, curving into dangerous territory. "What parts of me do you think about?"

"Your hands," Gord answered readily. "And your mouth. Certainly other parts of you. I think about what you must be like in bed."

"I can show you."

A pause, probably just a second or two but in the altered time of suspended confrontation and teenage arousal, it felt like a solid half-minute at least.

"You can't," Gord said.

"I can."

"No," Gord said. He was looking away from Jimmy, unable to meet his eyes. Any confidence he'd shown before seemed to have drained away.

Jimmy's restraint crumbled. He reached for Gord's hand, then his face, pulling him down for a kiss, their cold noses bumping together. It wasn't their best kiss, their mouths far too numb to interact properly, but it was something. It was closure.

Gord pulled away first. "We were never going to last very long."

"Naturally," Jimmy said mildly.

"And if we fuck I'll probably never get over you."

"You would," Jimmy said, already referring to their relationship in hypothetical terms.

"I wouldn't," Gord said. "Not ever."

"That's a bit dramatic."

"I mean it. Years from now when I'm sitting in my huge mansion sipping expensive imported wine, I'll suddenly think of you and gasp theatrically, and drop my crystalline wineglass and ruin the rug."

Jimmy laughed in spite of himself. "Can't have that, I guess."

He released Gord for the last time, accepted the cigarette when Gord passed it his way, and when it dwindled to nothing Gord flicked the butt into the gutter, stood, swept the dust off his pant legs. Jimmy picked the carton of cigarettes off the ground.

"Keep them," Gord said. Jimmy was afraid he'd leave without saying anything more, and he'd have to chase him down and beat a proper conclusion out of him, but before he descended the ladder he said, "I guess I'll just see you around then. Good night, Jimmy." And that was enough.

That night bled into morning, and the next day bled into the next week, into the next month. He went to the Winter Formal with Eunice, who seemed happy enough to be someone's eleventh hour choice and who, he discovered during the after party, still kissed with as much fervor as ever. On New Years Eve he and Pete blew off a New Years Party the morning of and drove out to see Gary instead, who had been let out and was staying with his parents in Bledsoe. It was tense and uncomfortable, but Pete was happy so Jimmy was happy. Gary, he suspected, was happy too, even if he chose to express it via constant and biting diatribe. Gary's mother (who was anxious and clenched her jaw a lot, had Gary's hair and eyes) made them dinner, and the whole time Pete thanked her over and over for having them, and Jimmy looked at the clock and counted down the minutes until they could go back home.

They still weren't friends, him and Gary. Not when Jimmy came right down to it. He figured they might never be. On the drive back to Bullworth he gave it some serious thought and concluded he would probably be okay with never seeing Gary again. That's the way things went, though. Some things end before you're ready for them to end, and some grievances were unforgivable. But he was trying.


	7. You're Not Going Anywhere (Summer 2008)

_**SUMMER, 2008  
**_ _ **Chapter 7**_

 _"I've got what it takes to help you make mistakes, to put you through a phase that's harder than it seems."  
_ Brad Sucks, "You're Not Going Anywhere" - _Out of It,_ 2008

* * *

"Okay, Pete."

"I am dead serious."

"Uh-huh."

"I knew I shouldn't have said anything."

"You should have known better, honestly," Jimmy said, from behind a short stack of letters. Every inch of Pete's mother's coffee table was covered in college catalogs and envelopes. Jimmy pulled an envelope off the top of the pile. "I think this one's Ivy League."

"How'd that get in there?" Pete asked from his spot on the floor.

"Dunno. Into the inferno," Jimmy said, flinging it Frisbee-style it into the crackling fireplace.

"I promise you it is haunted," Pete continued. "I'm a skeptic, too, but I know what I heard."

"By what, a ghost nun? Ghost priest?"

"It sounded young."

"It _talked_ to you?" He held up an envelope. "NYU?"

"Nah." Into the fire. "No, it didn't talk to me. It was crying."

Real or no, the mental image of a crying ghost child, especially against the backdrop of the old church in the Vale, was an unnerving one. Jimmy suppressed a shiver. "I dunno, Pete. I think you were getting punked."

"Yeah, maybe," Pete said. He tossed another handful of university advertisements into the fire behind him. It was mid-June and far too hot for a fire but they'd built one anyway. They'd already burnt all their old assignments, had tossed in a couple textbooks for good measure. "And anyway," he added, "I dunno why a little ghost child would want to steal your bike."

"That's the shining flaw in your otherwise flawless theory, yeah," Jimmy said. He shifted through more envelopes and pamphlets, some of which had been shoved into his arms by Mr. Galloway the last day of his junior year. Have you heard of these colleges, he wanted to know, and have you thought about where you want to start applying in the fall, and make sure you pick a safe bet and a couple reaches, and if you're interested in an English degree at all you should look into this one, and this, and this. Jimmy was pretty sure he _wasn't_ interested in getting an English degree, but he didn't say so, partly because he tried to encourage Mr. Galloway whenever he could and partly because vocalizing any opinion about college at all usually evoked the question of well, what _did_ he want to do?

And he didn't really know.

"I don't know why we're bothering with all these. There's no way I'm going out of state."

"Me either," Pete said. "Maybe I'll apply to a couple just to say I got in."

"Yeah," Jimmy said. "Something on the West Coast."

"Like Oregon State? Or something in Washington?"

"I was thinking somewhere warm. As in, always warm."

"Ah, yeah. That'd be nice." Pete stretched forward like a cat, the motion eliciting a stiff groan. "Ugh. Fuck it. Just throw 'em all out." He grabbed armfuls of paper and tossed them into the fireplace. The fire spat and expanded, and Pete joined Jimmy on the couch to escape the heat.

It really was unusually hot out, for June. It was early evening and the air outside was rapidly cooling, but in cargo shorts and a muscle tee, Jimmy still felt overdressed. Pete's house had air conditioning, but only barely. _Why did we think it was a good idea to start a fire again?_

Pete sprawled across the couch. "You wanna watch TV?"

Jimmy checked his watch. "I should probably go, actually. Hector needs me in early today."

"Damn," Pete said. "What are you gonna ride?"

 _Right_. _A ghost stole my bike._ "I'll figure something out."

* * *

Jimmy's old mountain bike had seen a fair bit of abuse, and one of the wheels was a bit fucked, but it rode well enough, and that's all that mattered to Heck.

Hector was a tall, skinny man with fluffy graying hair and a beaky nose. He looked like a bird and sometimes sounded a little like one, too, especially when he was in the midst of breaking up a fight in his parlor. Jimmy liked Heck because Heck liked Jimmy, and because he gave free pizza to his delivery boys, and he didn't make Jimmy put on anything embarrassing when he clocked in to start his shift.

The little bell over the parlor door clamored when he entered. The whole place only a few strides long, the seating area restricted to a strip of stools adjacent the front-facing windows, and the space was already packed with the standard Friday-night fare. Jimmy had to squeeze through a tiny crowd just to get to the counter.

"Hi, Hector," he said.

"You're early, Jimmy," Heck said, never one for formalities. "Got some orders for you already, plus parcel—a drop off." He slid the heavy black delivery bag and a box wrapped in newsprint across the counter toward him. "You get a new bike?"

"Sure did."

"Good boy. Get goin'."

Jimmy didn't have to be told twice. The delivery bag was dimensioned to fit snugly into a wire-frame basket fastened below the handlebars of his bike, propped up from below by two sturdy metal strips that ran down to the skewers. The parcel went into his backpack. Napoli's Pizzeria drew the majority of its revenue from its titular commodity, but in the wake of name-brand competition cropping up in the Bullworth area, Heck had taken to doing express deliveries for people around town to supplement his income. Usually, if the delivery was something legitimate, Jimmy would be given a pick-up and delivery point. A drop off to the shop usually meant drugs, or so Jimmy figured. He was pretty sure if he were to crack into the package he'd find something innocent enough—an alarm clock, a textbook, toiletries—with hash hidden up inside it. Heck hadn't seemed to catch onto this himself, and Jimmy figured that gave them both enough plausible deniability to cover their asses, so long as he played dumb enough. He wasn't too worried about it, though. He'd done worse for less.

Night had already fallen, and though that evening was warm the air rushing past him as he sped to his first destination was enough to cool him. He found himself wishing he'd thought to bring a sweatshirt.

New Coventry was first on the docket, unfortunately. He still didn't like going down there much, especially now that every single one of the old crew of greasers had graduated. He didn't even want to think about how strange it would be in the fall when there were no familiar faces around the garages anymore. Even some of the dropouts had left the area for better work.

He slowed as he reached the underpass. In an effort to brighten up the area, Ms. Philips had enlisted the help of her Studio Arts seniors and had painted a mural along the wall beneath the bridge, a big, modern, colorful compilation of feel-good imagery, all centered around angular block letters that read NEW COVENTRY. Beneath the paint could faintly be seen the remnants of four-foot tall purple lettering: JIMMY WUZ HERE. He might have been upset at one point that his tag had been covered up, but these days the last thing he needed was his name advertised on the doorstep of greaser territory. _"Jimmy? As in Jimmy Wuz Here?"_ he could imagine one of them saying. _No pal, not me. That's some other Jimmy,_ he'd say through gritted teeth.

Jimmy knew the ins and outs of New Coventry about as well as any place he'd ever lived, and it was easy enough to avoid unwanted attention when he needed to. There was no deficit of alleyways and side roads, and when it came to it he could haul his bike onto his shoulder, tuck the pizzas under his arm, and find a roof to climb atop, get around that way. But the roads were relatively sparse for a Friday, and he made it to the residential district without incident.

When he rounded the corner, he expected a pile of rubble or an empty lot where the tenements had been, but they were still standing, and lit up like a Christmas tree along the lower floors at that. He could see even from a distance that they were in as poor condition as ever. He could also see, looking over the order slip again, that his entire haul, pizzas, parcel, and all, were all addressed for the tenements.

He nearly went for the sectioned off side window out of habit, but he made for the front door of the building, knocked. The door cracked open, was thrown wide when the man standing just inside caught proper sight of his uniform.

"Hey, thanks man." The man had a shaved head and heavily pierced ears. Jimmy didn't recognize him. He handed over the packages, accepted the warm crinkled bills pushed into his hand. He could see maybe a couple dozen people inside but he guessed there were more. A voice called out from inside, not familiar enough to name but familiar enough that he wasn't too surprised when it said, "Is that Hopkins? Jimmy Hopkins?"

Edgar, looking weary and hard-faced, but happy, pushed through the crowd.

"Edgar? What are you doing in this part of town?"

Edgar waved a hand. "New greasers don't know anybody, they barely defend their turf anymore." He squeezed out the door, put an arm around Jimmy's shoulders. "Enough about that, though, you gotta tell me what you've been up to."

Jimmy shrugged away. "I'm working, dude," he said, but Edgar wasn't having it.

"Just come in and say hi to the guys, okay? It's seriously been forever, I haven't seen you since that riot you started."

"Oh, shit, you're _that_ Jimmy? Bullworth Jimmy?" Door Guy said.

"It wasn't a riot—"

Edgar had successfully maneuvered Jimmy into the house by this point. "He's being modest." He turned and shouted further into the house. "Leon! Clint! Hopkins is here!" He handed Jimmy a bottle, slick and ice-cold. Jimmy took one last look at the exit.

 _Fuck it, I can have one drink._

Leon was pleased to see him, Clint less so (though Jimmy couldn't remember Clint ever being particularly happy to see anyone). The three of them showed him around, introduced him to people whose hands he shook and whose names he forgot moments after he heard him. There were more holes in the ceiling than he remembered, and the staircases to the second floor were blocked off, for very good reason, he assumed.

The four of them found themselves on a fairly disgusting couch in one of the quieter rooms that Jimmy guessed, based on the gray tiles visible beneath the graffiti on the walls and the visible plumbing, was probably a laundry room at one point, before it was gutted and used as a hangout.

Jimmy was halfway through his second beer when Leon asked, "What happened with Zoe, man?"

 _Oh, boy_. He wasn't equipped to deal with this conversation sober, and he was developing a slight buzz. "Not much to say."

"Where is she now? Exeter?"

"Byoak."

"Shit," Edgar said. "Byoak's far."

"Mhmm."

"She did you dirty, man," Leon said. "I didn't think she was like that."

"Like what?" Jimmy asked, a little more sharply than he meant to.

"Like a two-timing slut," Clint said.

Jimmy looked at him. "Watch yourself."

"Am I wrong?" Clint asked. "She ran around behind your back."

 _He's not wrong_. "It wasn't like that."

"So she _didn't_ fuck some junky then?"

"No, actually, she didn't." He was getting annoyed, and the alcohol wasn't helping. "She did cheat on me, though," he admitted.

"How did she cheat on you if she didn't fuck anybody?"

"Talking counts, idiot," Edgar said.

Leon looked aghast. "I've cheated on every girl I've ever dated, then."

"No I mean like...confiding in them and shit. Emotional cheating."

Clint laughed. "Is that how it was Jimmy? She cheated on your feelings?"

"I'd really rather not talk about it." Jimmy squeezed his bottle. _No fighting, no fighting, no fighting._ To his relief, Edgar pushed his arm across Clint.

"Hey man, old wounds. Don't rub it in," he said lightly. Jimmy could have kissed him. To his relief, Clint backed off, leaned back against the couch and sipped his beer. The sleeve of his t-shirt slipped up his bicep, revealing his barbed wire tattoo. _Never trust a man with a barbed wire tattoo_ , Jimmy's mother had told him who knows how many years ago. Her judgment wasn't always the best, but it was hard to spend as much time around shitty people as his mother had and not get a feel for their common traits. Clint had been trustworthy enough, the short time Jimmy had known him, but maybe there was something to his mom's advice nonetheless.

There was a lull. Jimmy could feel Leon and Edgar looking awkwardly at him. He checked his watch, hoping enough time had passed that he could reasonably use being late back as an excuse. He scrambled to his feet.

"Shit, I'm _actually_ really late." He wobbled, fell back against the armrest.

"You need me to show you out?" Edgar asked.

"Uh." He looked around, spotted a window above an ancient washing machine. "I'll just use the window, if you don't mind."

"Oh, uh...sure man. And hey," he called, as Jimmy shoved the window up in its frame. "Don't be a stranger."

"Sure," Jimmy called back. _No promises._

His bike, thankfully, was still right where he'd left it, a rare occurrence in that part of town. According to his watch, his twenty minute visit had turned into an hour-long diversion, and to top it off, he was tipsy and smelled like beer. And, he realized as he made his way back to Bullworth Town, wobbling slightly—his delivery hat was missing. Maybe Heck had extras, but something told him he was going to have to pay for it to be replaced.

On second thought, he was probably going to get fired.

As tempting as it would be to lie to Hector, tell him he got jumped, or his bike broke down, or any other number of plausible fabrications, his frustration with himself outweighed all that. He couldn't just tell Edgar to fuck off? _No, Edgar, I'm working right now. You know, contributing to society? That thing you never do?_ He couldn't have walked out sooner, before his tiny ass had gotten the chance to get buzzed off two beers?

But for as many could-haves as he could conjure, he knew at the back of his mind precisely what had compelled him to stick around. When Edgar had shown up, looking happy to see him, that little arrogant part of his brain that loved being desired in any capacity lit up. It seemed no matter how many times he wound up learning some hard lesson in the end, he always gave in to that tick.

The short, curving streets of New Coventry seemed even more so on a buzz, and he slowed, coming to a stop at the quiet, laundry-lined mouth of an alleyway. He propped himself and his bike up with his leg, taking deep breaths. _You're doing fine, you're good to go_...he waited for his nausea to worsen, or the telltale wetness under his tongue, but the feeling passed. He hadn't had _that_ much to drink, after all.

He didn't hear the footsteps approach. "You're on the wrong side of town, big guy," a voice drawled from the alley. A hand fell on his shoulder and squeezed.

He hadn't had a proper fight in a while, but his reflexes were still good, firing on faulty pistons but firing all the same. Though the alcohol slowed him a bit, he swung his leg off his bike, spun into his attacker, and got them on the ground and between his knees without much difficulty.

His assailant wheezed. " _Shit,_ Jimmy, it's just me."

In the shadow of the alley he couldn't make out the assailant's face right away, but the voice rang some old bell in his mind. His eyes adjusted, registered the face below him. Green eyes and rust-colored hair. Jimmy let go of his collar.

"Jesus Christ. Are you stupid?"

Vance smiled a little, inexplicably, as though he couldn't help himself. "I'm sorry, Jimmy."

"You wanna get your ass killed?"

Vance was laughing now. "I should've known better, I forgot how quick to—" Jimmy got up, ignoring him. "Jimmy, come on. I'm sorry, man!"

Jimmy swung his legs over his bike. After the spike of adrenaline wore off, he just felt nauseous, almost certainly from spinning so quickly off his bike. "Listen, I'm really drunk and I'm about to get fired, I don't have time for this right now." He put his foot to the pedal, slipped, and stumbled.

"Ack," he said. Had he had only two beers? Three, maybe? He counted back through the night in his mind. If he counted the one he was most of the way through before he left, that made three. Didn't it?

Vance steadied him. "How much have you had to drink?"

"Can't remember," Jimmy answered instantly, implicating himself.

"You want me to walk you?"

"Nope."

"Yeah, I was asking to be nice, you're getting walked." Vance reached behind him and beneath the saddle, and grabbed the bike by the seatpost, halting him. Jimmy had wasted what little coordination he still possessed on taking Vance down, and he gave up, dismounting the bike and taking it by the handlebars. Begrudgingly, he swept his arm forward. "Lead the way."

"Gladly," Vance said. He pulled out a pack of Newports, caught one between his lips, offered the pack to Jimmy, who shook his head. "Don't smoke?"

"Trying to quit," Jimmy replied.

"Ah, good luck," Vance said, not unkindly.

"Thanks." He looked Vance over. He looked different, was wearing just a gray flannel shirt with the sleeves rolled up and his hair, most notably, was a little shorter and brushed tidily back but otherwise undone.

"Why're you back in town?" Jimmy asked, urging his bike along the streets.

"Got a job," Vance said, with, Jimmy would eventually learn, all the pep of someone who had not started said job yet. "As a mechanic."

"Oh, yeah?"

"Mhm, on-the-job training starts Monday." He blew a plume of smoke skyward. "I'm pretty jazzed."

"I can tell." Jimmy was silent until another thought struck him. "Who else is back?"

"Who else?"

"You know," Jimmy said, suddenly incredibly self-conscious. He felt like a child, talking about cliques. "Never mind."

Vance seemed to catch on. "You're the only familiar face I've seen all night, actually."

"Really?"

"Yeah." As they passed Ms. Philips' mural, he shook his head. "Look at this. Look how _cute_ it is. How long has this been up and nobody's defaced it yet?"

It _was_ surreptitiously free of graffiti. "April, I think?"

"Jesus," Vance said. "New kids don't know how to run the place. Swear I saw a couple of 'em try to start a turf war with _each other_." He eyed Jimmy. "They mess with you?"

"Sometimes."

"You show 'em what-for?"

Jimmy laughed out loud. "No. They don't know any better."

"Yeah, I guess so." Vance exhaled another plume of smoke, and looked good doing it. _Is that the alcohol talking?_ Jimmy wondered. No, he decided, Vance definitely had something going on. The light was shining off his cheekbones and his pale, moss-colored eyes. _Have they always been that green? Like,_ that _fucking green?_

Vance looked over, caught him staring, smiled around his cigarette. "What are you looking at?"

"Nothing," Jimmy said. To his dismay, he could feel heat rushing to his cheeks, no doubt helped along by the alcohol. He was blushing and he knew it. Not for the first time, he found himself regretting being a ginger.

"Oh, that's cute," Vance said.

"Shut up."

"I mean it. You look good when you're embarrassed."

Almost without realizing it and definitely without thinking about it, Jimmy said, "Yeah? How good?"

Vance cocked an eyebrow but stayed cool otherwise. "Don't get ahead of yourself, sweetheart."

 _Yeah, don't get ahead of yourself you dumb fucking bastard_ , but Reasonable Jimmy was small and quiet when he was buzzed, as he was beginning to discover. "What's that supposed to mean?"

Vance sighed. "I mean, don't say anything you or me might regret when you're sober."

 _Oh_. He thought of the several ways he could possibly respond to that, picked the first one that jumped out at him.

"But I like boys." _Incredible, Jimmy._

Vance slowed down. "Your destination," he said, sweeping his arm. Napoli's was just up the street.

"How'd you know where I work?"

Vance poked a finger into Jimmy's chest, where the shop logo was emblazoned on his uniform. "'Cuz I can read." He looked at Jimmy, who was suddenly reminded of the preserved specimens he'd studied in Biology class, held to the light and twisted.

"Listen, Jimmy..." Vance stopped, dropped the remains of his cigarette, ground it into the asphalt with his boot. There was a pen tied to Jimmy's delivery tray, meant for scratching things off order slips, and Vance took it. He scribbled something on Jimmy's arm. "If you still like boys in the morning, call me." Vance tossed the pen back into the tray, patted Jimmy's shoulder, suddenly all business. He stuck another cigarette between his teeth. Gestured toward the parlor.

"Go on! Good luck. Try not to get fired." And then he turned heel and jogged off, back toward New Coventry. Jimmy stared at him until he rounded the corner and disappeared from sight.

 _No promises,_ Jimmy thought, for the second time that night, and _fuck, what a babe_ , and also _I'm going to vomit_. And he did, right over the side of his bike, only narrowly missing his own foot. Maybe he'd had four beers.


	8. Gives You Hell

_**SUMMER, 2008 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 8**_

 _"Tomorrow you'll be thinking to yourself, where'd it all go wrong? But the list goes on and on."  
_ The All-American Rejects, "Gives You Hell" - _When the World Comes Down,_ 2008

* * *

Jimmy didn't lose his job, but Heck gave him a hell of a talking-to (during which he made several remarkably bird-like noises), and told Jimmy he had no time for slackers, and that he had his eye on him. Jimmy believed Heck, wasn't sure he believed himself when he promised it wouldn't happen again. Heck sent him off, clearly disgusted, and Jimmy found himself in another dilemma—he had to figure out how to make it back to Pete's place in the residential district, where he'd left all his stuff, without wiping out on a minor obstacle and breaking his goddamn neck. He'd read somewhere that drunk people crash harder because their bodies don't tense up the way you're supposed to when you panic, and he imagined his rubbery body colliding with a metal fence post, skewering across one of the tapered tips in an explosion of blood and mangled flesh.

He decided he'd walk.

The way back to Pete's was fairly long, but luckily most everyone in that part of Bullworth turned in early, including their dogs, and he wasn't bothered. He spotted a few shades draw suddenly closed as he passed, but he couldn't bring himself to be bothered by that, and didn't blame them either—he was still wobbling, even with his feet firmly on the ground.

By the time he got to Pete's house, he was so tired he almost didn't remember not to ring the doorbell. He left his bike and went around the side of the house instead, rapping as quietly as he could on Pete's window.

Pete shoved the window open almost immediately. "Jesus Christ, knock a little harder, would you?"

"I'm trying to be quiet!"

Pete winced. "You are practically shouting, what is the matter with you?" He leaned forward. "Is that beer?"

"Uh..."

"Just get in," he said, grabbing Jimmy by the sleeves of his shirt and tugging. Exhaustion and drunkenness were working together to turn him to dead weight, and he clattered across the end table beneath the window and fell, face down, onto Pete's unmade bed.

"Oh, my God," Pete said.

The bedroom door cracked open. Pete's dad, a tall, fragile-looking man with dark brown hair buzzed short like Pete's and gold wire-frame glasses, stuck his head in the door. Pete's dad was a librarian, and looked like one.

"If you're going to make that much noise, you may as well come in the front."

"Sorry, dad," Pete said. "It's just Jimmy."

"I see that," he said. "You want anything, Jimmy?"

Jimmy made a barely audible noise into Pete's pillow.

"Uh...he said no."

"Okay," he said, audibly amused, and shut Pete's bedroom door. Jimmy hauled himself onto his side. Pete's room was pretty small, not much bigger than the rooms back at Bullworth, and was sparsely decorated; _if you don't see it, I don't need it_ , he'd said the first time Jimmy came over. He had an unfinished pinewood desk, a desk and side table that just barely matched, dark gray loop-pile carpeting, and a closet closed off by a metal accordion door, slightly ajar, ejecting clothing onto the floor.

Pete seated himself at his desk, chair turned to face Jimmy. "What the hell happened to you?"

"Well, I'm drunk."

"Yes," was all Pete said, waiting for Jimmy to explain.

"I delivered to the tenements and the townies were there, having a party."

"Isn't that greaser turf?"

"When's the last time you saw a greaser actually greasing?"

"Good point, carry on."

"I saw Edgar, and some of the other—" he stopped suddenly, slapped his thigh. "I left my delivery bag there, fuck!"

"Does this story end with you getting fired?"

"No, shut up, lemme finish." Jimmy struggled to remember his place in the story. "Anyway, I stuck around for a beer, one beer turned into two..." he rolled his hand through the air, _you know how it goes_. "And then I noticed the time and left, after like an hour."

"And you _didn't_ get fired?"

"Nope. I definitely owe Heck." Jimmy said. He thought of Vance, considered not telling Pete about him, but he wasn't one for keeping secrets. Not many, anyway. "You know who else I ran into?"

"Besides the dropouts? Who?"

"Vance."

"Vance..."

"Med...uh...midi..."

"Medici?"

"Is _that_ how you say that? But, yeah, that one."

"Yikes," Pete said. "Did they give you any shit?"

"Who?"

"The greasers. Obviously."

"They were friends with me. And Vance graduated like a year ago."

"Right," Pete conceded.

"And anyway, he was alone." Jimmy paused. "He flirted with me."

Pete laughed a little. "Oh. That's weird."

"It wasn't."

"What do you mean?" Pete asked. "That's _is_ kinda..." He trailed off, as though properly registering what Jimmy meant. Then, hard enough to startle Jimmy, he slapped a hand on his desk. "Ah, Jimmy! You're gonna get your dumbass heart broken again!"

The confidence with which Pete said it was so sure and unshakable that Jimmy couldn't help but laugh. "What the hell is _that_ supposed to mean?"

"You never learn!" Pete practically shouted. " _Stop fucking around with redheads_."

"But they're my _kind_ ," Jimmy blurted, and now Pete was laughing, too, which set Jimmy on another bout, laughing until his face hurt from smiling and Pete's dad was knocking on the door and saying would they _please_ keep it down?

They gradually calmed down, and Jimmy could feel exhaustion taking hold once again. Pete said, "You can stay over, but you can't sleep in my bed."

"Okay," Jimmy said. And then he was asleep.

* * *

He woke in the afternoon to Pete's mom shaking his shoulder and asking if he'd please get out of her house before she opened the blinds and inflicted the sun on him. Pete had courteously shut them before he'd left to do...whatever it was he was doing that day, and the pain all over Jimmy's head thanked him.

"Mmmmkay," he managed.

"I mean it, Jimmy," she said, then: "You drink coffee?"

"...not usually."

"Okay. You need water then. And something greasy, I'd say," she said. She had a quiet voice, though deep for a woman. It was pleasant, and, importantly, did not hurt him to listen to.

"Okay." He laid still.

"Jimmy, come on, it's my lunch break, I can't leave you in my house alone."

With a great effort, Jimmy rolled out of bed, stumbled into the Kowalski's bathroom—he was still in his work clothes, he noticed—and made a clumsy but valiant attempt to clean himself up, putting on his sleeveless shirt and shorts from the day before. Pete's mom was already gone by the time he made it to the kitchen, but she'd left him orange juice. He thought about making something to eat but decided he'd taken enough, took just the juice. By the time he left, it was nearly 1:00 p.m.

Out in the sun, he collected his bike, shoved his things into his backpack and strapped it as best he could to the delivery tray, which he'd been too inebriated to properly unfasten the night before. He blinked, shading his eyes with his hands, and as he looked around was taken by the subtle thrill of having no plans that day. He was starting to appreciate the feeling a little more these days, now that college loomed nearer and nearer.

 _Why are you thinking about college like you're sure you're gonna go there?_ Jimmy thought. He dispelled the thought, thinking it a little cruel of himself to be so self-critical while he was hungover. No destination in mind, he pushed off toward town, coasting downhill. He definitely needed to eat, and it needed to be greasy, like Mrs. Kowalski said. The Bullworth area, luckily, was in no shortage of greasy food joints. He patted his pockets, then the outside pockets on his backpack, searching for change. He spotted a smudge on his arm, peered at it.

Jimmy yanked the brakes, and the bike came shuddering rapidly to a stop. The numbers on his arm had faded a bit from tossing as he slept but they were there, and he could read them. He sped to the nearest phone booth he could find, rummaged for quarters, fed them into the machine.

Vance picked up on the third ring. "Hello?"

"Hi," Jimmy said. "Oh, uh...it's Jimmy."

"Hey."

"I'm sober," Jimmy said.

"Yeah?"

"And still interested."

He couldn't see it, of course, but he was pretty sure Vance was smiling. " _That's_ what I like to hear."

* * *

Vance met him in the Happy Diner. Nearly an hour passed between the call and then, and Jimmy almost thought he wouldn't show. "Traffic," he explained. _Ooh, a boy with a car,_ Jimmy thought, only mostly ironically.

Vance settled into one of the booths. He was wearing flannel again, but faded navy blue this time, sleeves pushed to his elbows. His hair looked freshly washed. Some of it fell into his eyes. "Classy joint," he said, grinning.

"I'm hungover, okay?"

"I can see that. You really are a lightweight, huh?"

"Yeah," Jimmy admitted. "I'm...small."

"So I shouldn't call you cute anymore?"

 _Right for the throat._ Jimmy willed himself not to let Vance's flirting excite him yet. He thought of what Pete had said about messing with redheads—did Vance's hair count as red? It was certainly reddish. "You can call me cute."

"I can?"

"Sure. I'm fucking cute," he said, as the waitress arrived. She cocked a brow at him, asked if he knew what he wanted.

"This guy needs something greasy," Vance said. The waitress smiled knowingly. "House burger sound good?"

" _Yes,_ " Jimmy said. Now that he could actually smell food, he realized just how hungry he was.

"And you?"

"Nothing for me," Vance said. When he saw Jimmy's eyes on him, he said, "I ate already. I'm here for you."

 _Self-control, Jimmy_. "Oh."

"So you're a junior now?"

"Well, I'm not anything _now,_ " Jimmy said, grateful for the opportunity to talk about something boring and unsexy like school.

"Senior in the fall?"

"Yep."

"Shit," Vance said. "Big year."

"Easier than Junior year, I've heard," Jimmy replied, hoping Vance would confirm.

"In some ways. If you know what you want and you're on track to graduate and all."

"Well, I'm one of those things."

"You not going to college?"

Jimmy wasn't sure he liked the direction the conversation was going. If he had to choose between discussing his future and sexually frustrating himself, he wasn't sure which was worse, especially right now while was stomach was empty and his head was still hammering. "I'm applying, at least."

"That's good. Keep your options open." Jimmy can't remember how old Vance was exactly, probably eighteen, no older than nineteen at the latest, but he felt like a kid then, hearing _keep your options open_ , the go-to line from his mom, Pete's mom, his teachers, when they pressed him about college. Maybe it was just perspective, but he figured being out of high school for even just a year must change you a lot. He was preparing to ask Vance as much when his food arrived, and he abandoned the conversation entirely.

"Jesus, slow down," Vance said, though he looked entertained. Jimmy only shook his head. Vance leaned forward, propped his chin up on his fist.

"Do you go down on everything with this much enthusiasm?"

Jimmy choked.

Vance laughed. "Sorry," he said.

"No, you're not."

"Maybe not," Vance replied. He stood up then, tugging his cigarettes out of his sleeve. "I'll be outside. Come find me if you finish before I get back." And he slid out of the booth and past him, the ringing bell signaling his exit.

The food and water, plus the coffee, which he could certainly learn to develop a taste for, had done wonders for his headache, and after he called the waitress and paid he could feel the worst of his hangover fading away. Outside, Vance was nowhere to be seen, and Jimmy was sure he'd up and left until he heard a quiet _psst!_ from above him.

Vance was on the roof. He swung his head upward, motioning for Jimmy to join him. Jimmy'd been up there before, found the roof access ladder in the alley with no problem. Vance was sitting against the brick wall of the connected adjacent business. He held the pack of cigarettes out in greeting.

"Right, you don't smoke."

"I'll take one."

"You're not letting me peer pressure you, are you?"

"Just a little." He took one, sat next to Vance, lit it on the cherry end of Vance's cigarette. He took a drag and regretted it immediately. _Hello, nicotine. There goes weeks of abstinence,_ he thought. He could feel Vance's eyes on him.

"Your hair's longer," Vance noted.

It was indeed getting long, orange bordering on strawberry-blonde, waving just a little around his ears. "Yeah," Jimmy said. "Might buzz it off again. Since it's getting hot."

"Looks pretty good either way," Vance said. His hands wandered to Jimmy's face, lighting on his cheek. "Where's this scar from?"

"Got in a fight."

"I figured."

"You figured?"

"Yeah, how could I forget?" Vance asked, looking incredulous. "I was your target a time or two, remember?"

"Well, I broke up a fight, really," Jimmy said quickly. "I don't start them anymore."

"That's smart," Vance said. He released Jimmy's face, looked across the rooftops of the residential district. _What is with me and roofs? And smoking on them?_ Jimmy wondered.

"So what else is new with you, Jimmy?" Vance asked, looking at him again, in his scrutinizing, amused way. "Still got no shame. Still a hardass." He took a drag from his cigarette, as though to punctuate. "Still a fuckin' knockout."

Jimmy remembered the mild day sometime during the Spring of last year when he'd first heard that, shouted at him from some alleyway. He hadn't thought about it at the time, had bigger concerns, but maybe Vance had planted some seed then for an idea that Jimmy was only just coming around to, and had done so in broad daylight, in front of Jimmy's friends and Vance's own.

He bet Vance would hold his hand wherever. He bet Vance would kiss him wherever. He bet Vance would do all kinds of things with him.

 _You're gonna get your dumbass heart broken_. Full-speed ahead, Jimmy asked, "Are you seeing anybody right now?"

Vance's brows furrowed, and then he smiled, a fluid expression of incredulity, and then he was laughing, and Jimmy was sure it was one of the most beautiful things he'd ever seen.

"Obviously not," he finally said.

"Nice," Jimmy said, and he took Vance by the collar and pulled him in for a kiss.

* * *

Only years later would Jimmy really appreciate what a good thing he had with Vance. They had a car and few obligations and a little money and they wanted each other badly. Sometimes those don't all fall in line. It was his last real summer as a kid and he had a good thing.

When he got back to Bullworth late that afternoon, Pete was waiting for him. He'd been moved into his smallest room yet, because it cost money to maintain the rooms during the break and he wasn't the only kid whose parents couldn't collect him for the summer. This one had one window with mismatched vertical blinds over a folding desk, and a folding chair, with an old wardrobe and a twin-size bed and just enough room to walk besides. Jimmy didn't mind, was glad to be taken in at all. He'd kept some of the trophies and thrown everything else out and it was easy enough to do; he'd moved enough in the past that he knew better than to get emotionally attached to material things. There were exceptions, of course. Zoe's picture was not on his desk anymore but he kept it in its frame in a tobacco box in his wardrobe. He kept her poem in his wallet.

Pete was seated at Jimmy's desk, had curly fries from Burgers, and books. "I got our copies of the summer reading from the library."

"Ew. What?"

"The summer reading?"

Jimmy was horrified. "We have summer reading?"

Pete threw his head back. "Jimmy!"

Jimmy threw his work clothes on his bed and sat at the foot of it. "Is is something not lame, at least?"

" _All the Pretty Horses_."

"What the fuck?"

"It's by the same guy that wrote _No Country for Old Men_."

"That was a book?" The year before, a sizable percent of the student body saw _No Country for Old Men_ , and the administration at Bullworth had the foresight to ban captive bolt pistols and any other similar compression-based weaponry from the school grounds. There wasn't much they could do about coin-tosses, though, and every deal and disagreement for months seemed to be settled by bets on quarters. It meant less outright scraps, though, and therefore fewer fights to break up and less work overall for Jimmy.

"You're feeling better?" Pete asked.

"Huh? Oh, yeah. Really good, actually."

"What have you been up to all day?" Pete asked, holding the fries out to him.

"Oh, you know," he said, then, unable to play it cool: "I hung out with Vance."

"Oooh."

"We made out."

Pete looked perturbed. Jimmy threw himself back on to the bed and groaned.

"Can't you be normal about this? _'Hey, Jimmy, nice job scoring?'_ "

"Hey, it's my job to overthink things. You can get a 'nice job scoring' from anybody."

"When I score with a guy?" Jimmy asked.

"Good point. Nice job scoring," Pete said, dropping an onion ring in his mouth.

"Thanks. Now hand me some of those," he said.

" _Did_ you score though?" Pete asked.

"Not yet. But I'm going to."

"Like you were with Gord?"

"Nope. Vance wants me. Like, _really_ wants me. I can tell."

"Damn," Pete said. Jimmy took some onion rings, held the box back out to Pete, but Pete shook his head. "I don't really like them."

"Why'd you get them, then?"

"For you. 'Cuz they're your favorite."

Alarm bells clamored in Jimmy's head. "...why?"

"Pure bribery."

"It's hardly a bribe if you've already given me what I want."

"Yeah, I know, I'm not good at this."

Jimmy waited, sensing a bombshell.

"Please come with me to visit Gary," Pete said.

Jimmy balked. "Really? That's worth one carton of onion rings?"

"There was a burger too but I ate it."

Jimmy shook the carton. "This isn't even a _large_."

"Do you want to, or not?"

"Obviously not!" Gary was still out in Bledsoe with his mom. Jimmy hadn't visited him again since New Years and hadn't called. The only news he recieved of Gary's well-being was through Pete, who laid them out proudly, like a cat laying mice at his doorstep. _Gary's doing his GED now, Gary's on better meds now. Good for him_ , was all Jimmy could ever muster.

"I don't want to go alone anymore."

That was news to him. "Why not?"

"I dunno," Pete said helpfully. He leaned back in the desk chair, looking at the ceiling. "He just seems so...I mean, obviously he's not getting into trouble, and that's good. But he's inside all the time. I think it embarrasses him, to be seen like that."

"Why go at all then?" Jimmy asked.

A look passed over Pete's face that Jimmy couldn't identify. After a moment, he said, "He just doesn't have anyone else," Pete said. "His mom tries but she doesn't get along with him no matter what he does. I'm all he's got, in a way."

Pete looked utterly defeated. Jimmy tried to imagine what it would be like, having to be inside every day because you have nowhere and no one.

"How long have you guys known each other again?"

"A pretty long time."

"When were you gonna go?"

"I was actually gonna go today."

Jimmy covered his face with his hands, sighed. He was won over and he knew it. "Okay. But we are _not_ listening to _Pet Sounds_ again."

* * *

Neither of them were willing to drop any money on cassettes, so after a little deliberation they settled on petty theft. The dorm's Lost and Found room was full of a year's worth of lost belongings, not usually sorted and emptied until right before the new school year, and there was an entire box for lost CD and tape players. A thorough search netted them a copy of Essential French Grammar, an incomplete audiobook of Stephen King's _Blood and Smoke_ , and something unlabeled that they suspected was someone's private mixtape.

"Should we put this back?" Pete asked.

"Nah, whatever's on it is probably better than The Beach Boys."

Pete pocketed the tape. "Alright, it is..." He looked at his watch. "...almost 5 pm. I'm gonna call Gary."

There was no payphone on campus, and the main office closed early during the summer, so they biked back to Pete's as nightfall advanced. Pete's mom seemed more than supportive of their plan.

"It's nice of you to go with him," she told Jimmy while Pete was on the phone. He'd taken the handset into the living room, and Jimmy could just barely hear him from his seat at the Kowalski's kitchen table.

"Yeah," Jimmy answered, not sure what to say.

"This means a lot to him."

"I can tell."

Mrs. Kowalski looked like she wanted to say more, but she changed the subject instead. "Did you take care of the..." She tapped her forehead.

"Oh. Yeah. Food helped." _Among other things_. "Thanks for the tip."

"No problem," she said, smiling. She had a nice smile, and eyes the shape of Pete's, but pale blue. Jimmy had learned his lesson about going after older women but he still knew a beautiful one when he saw one.

Pete returned, looking pleased. "We can go. Gary's mom is okay with it." If Jimmy hadn't known any better, he might have mistaken Pete's haste for a spring in his step.

* * *

The blank tape from the Lost and Found, it turned out, was a vastly incomplete copy of the New Testament, and _Pet Sounds_ went back in the player.

"I'm going to go back in time and kill every Beach Boy in the cradle."

"It's really not that bad," Pete said as he steered the jeep onto the highway. Even though he didn't commute to school, his backseat had somehow accumulated a mess of books and papers anyway.

"Can we listen to the radio? Or nothing?" Pete ignored him, and Jimmy guessed that was a 'no'. A while passed and they settled into the easy silence of road trips. Jimmy set his head against the passenger window; every now and again, he'd glance at Pete, who was tapping his fingers quickly. Whatever nervous energy had been animating him before seemed to have multiplied. Pete looked over, caught Jimmy's eye.

"Can I ask you something weird?" Pete asked.

"You usually do."

Pete laughed, hollowly. "I'm kinda being serious."

"Okay. Shoot."

He seemed to struggle for a moment. It was a full fifteen seconds at least before he finally said, "How does it feel to kiss Vance?"

Jimmy thanked whatever deity was watching over him that it wasn't him behind the wheel, because he definitely would've swerved then. "Why?"

"Okay, no _'whys'_. I just said I'm being serious."

"But Vance, specifically?"

"Or Gord, I guess. Or Kirby."

"Just guys then?" Something tugged at his brain, like fishing line, reeling.

Pete sighed heavily. "Yes."

"Kinda like kissing girls. A little scratchier, though, and not usually as good." _Except Vance_ , he added privately.

There was a very long, horrible silence, during which Pete gripped the steering wheel very tightly and Jimmy tried to formulate the best possible way to say what he was thinking. The highway continued to ebb away outside, and as they came upon a rest stop exit, Pete flicked on his turn signal, angling the car onto the exit ramp. He pulled into a parking spot, put the brake on, the engine still running.

Finally, the silence getting a little too protracted to bear, Jimmy said, "Do I even have to ask why you wanted to know that?" On the road, Pete was free from any obligation to look him in the eyes, or look at him at all. Now he gave Jimmy a sideways glance. He rapped his fingers on the steering wheel.

"Already figured it out, eh?" he said, sounding fairly sore about it.

"I think so."

"How long have you known?"

"I suspected from time to time but I never really knew." _It's always the ones you don't expect._

"Yeah."

"Why wouldn't you just tell me, of all people?"

Pete sighed, the heavy, contrite sigh of someone who was being forced to admit to some inconsequential crime. "I wasn't really sure. About how I feel, I mean. It's not easy for me. It's embarrassing."

An uncomfortable thought occurred to Jimmy. "Do you, like...feel anything like that, like...about me?"

"God, no," Pete said, with such unabashed distaste that Jimmy couldn't help but believe him. "I'm serious. I'm sure of that now."

"Well, how'd you come around to it, then? Who _do_ you like?"

Pete didn't answer right away, just looked out at the faintly glowing vending machines against the front facade of the rest stop, but not before shooting Jimmy a furtive, guilty look. The little fishing line pulling at Jimmy's brain heaved all at once. The visits. The phone calls. The birthday.

" _Oh_."

"What?" Pete said, in a tone suggesting he knew exactly what.

"Him?"

Pete buried his face in his hands—no further explanation needed.

"Oh, _Pete!_ "

" _Fuck._ "

"Are you serious? _Him?_ "

Pete punched his fist into his leg, folded his arms across the steering wheel, buried his head in his arms, and he began to cry, the bitter and sparse tears of someone holding back a meltdown by sheer stubborn force of will.

Jimmy knew an angry cry when he saw one, so he didn't say anything, just let Pete cry. When Pete composed himself, he sat back and wiped his face clean with his sleeve. "I know it's stupid."

"Well..."

"I don't like it, either. But don't be mad."

"Why would I be _mad_?" Jimmy asked, bewildered.

"I dunno. Just don't be."

"I mean, you can't help it, right?" Jimmy said.

"Of course not. I've tried not to...feel like that. Like I said. _I_ don't like it, either."

"Then I'm not mad. Although," he added, "I wish you would've told me sooner."

Pete leaned back into his seat. He'd regained composure relatively quickly, with the haste of someone who was embarrassed by their own lack of dignity. "I know. Sorry. If I was sure about it, I would've."

"How could you not be sure?"

Pete cocked an eyebrow, tilted his head as though he were thinking it over. "I guess I don't really feel like that for any other guy."

"Really?"

"Hardly. It's just him. And not you," he added, glancing quickly at Jimmy. "Like, at all. Just to reaffirm. In case you weren't convinced."

"I was. But good to know."

Pete closed his eyes and sighed. "It's probably Stockholm Syndrome or something. I probably need therapy."

Jimmy didn't know how to respond, so he didn't. The rest stop was dark aside from the glow from the vending machines, eempty, and very still. Finally, Pete turned the accessories off, and they were plunged into near pitch dark.

"I'll be right back." Pete left for the bathrooms, and Jimmy got out of the jeep, stretched, and spotted a phone booth. He scavenged quarters from the ashtray in the jeep's center console.

Vance picked up on the second ring. "Hello?" Inflected upward, confused.

"It's me. I mean, it's Jimmy. I'm at a payphone."

"Oh, hey."

"Hey."

"So...what's up?"

Jimmy leaned against the wall behind the phone booth. "I want to see you again."

"Right now?"

"I can't now. Tomorrow, maybe? Are you free?"

"I start work tomorrow."

"After that?" Jimmy asked, too quickly. Vance laughed at his haste.

"Yes. After that. I'll probably get off at five, I can meet you outside the diner again, if you want."

"That sounds great."

The other end of the line went quiet, and Jimmy, who had never been prone to overthink, found himself worried. _Does he even want to hang out after his first day at work? Am I being annoying?_ Then, _when have I ever cared about being annoying before?_

Then Vance said, "I wish I could see you right now," and the worry vanished.

After he hung up, Jimmy sprinted out to the Jeep where Pete was waiting for him, trying his hardest not whoop into the sky.

* * *

The rest of the road to Gary's was uneventful. Parked in Gary's driveway, Pete looked nervous, fingers slipping on the keys as he yanked them out of the ignition.

"Fuck."

"Relax," Jimmy said. Pete just grimaced at him, looking pained. Whether they liked it or not, that visit was now a special one. "It's just like any other visit."

"Yeah," Pete said, visibly unconvinced. But he appeared to steel himself, and they went up to the front door together.

Every time Jimmy saw Gary every time he'd visited, he had expected Gary to look _different_ in some way, as though the healing process would change him from the outside as well as within, would reform him, heal his physical scars as well as his mental ones. Aside from slight changes in his hair and a slight fading of the scars Jimmy had inadvertently inflicted himself, he never looked much different at all.

Gary answered the door and Pete said a little, "Oh."

He looked gaunt. There was no other word for it. He couldn't have lost much weight but it was just enough to sink his cheeks a little, his eyes, and under the bright yellow overhead entry light, the shadows beneath his cheekbones looked deeper, darker.

"Hey losers," Gary said, casually. "My mom's working late, just come in."

They entered, Pete giving Jimmy a horrible, wide-eyed glance that sunk Jimmy's stomach. Gary led them into his living room, asked if they wanted anything.

"Just water." Pete said. "I'll get it," he added, when Gary moved toward the kitchen. And then Jimmy was alone with Gary Smith.

"So, uh," Jimmy said.

"I know. I look like shit," Gary said.

Jimmy couldn't bring himself to politely deny it. "Are you okay?"

"Yeah. I just don't have much appetite lately. I think it's my meds. We're working on it." He laughed suddenly, lowered his voice. "Poor Petey looked scared shitless."

"Yeah," Jimmy said. Unfortunately any time he had something he was strictly forbidden to bring up, it only brought the topic to the forefront of his mind. He was so concentrated on keeping himself from outing Pete that he nearly scolded himself when Gary brought it up first.

"You do _know_ about Petey, right? Why he does all this? I mean, aside from misguided charity?" He said this all very quietly, glancing covertly toward the kitchen.

"What do you mean?" Jimmy asked, feeling very much like he knew exactly what Gary meant.

"You know. His, uh... _special interest._ The _stunning_ new chapter in the Femme-Boy chronicles?"

"I guess I do, yeah." Jimmy was equally horrified and relieved by the direction the conversation was taking. "How'd you figure it out?"

Gary snorted. "He may as well have told me straight out. He's not good at hiding what he thinks," Gary said.

"What are you going to do about it?"

" _Ugh,_ " Gary said, sounding very much as though he didn't want to talk about it anymore, but Jimmy pushed him, intrigued.

"I mean, you don't reciprocate, I imagine?"

"Absolutely _not._ "

"You could tell him that."

"What do you want me to say to him, Jim? Hey, Pete, thanks for the eerie devotion and constant company, but I'm not gonna let you suck my dick so you may as well not bother? Tempting, I'll admit."

"Ah," Jimmy said, understanding. "So you're leading him on because you're _lonely_."

"That is _not_ what I said."

"Are you fucking kidding me?" Jimmy had to struggle to keep his voice down, feeling freshly annoyed. "That's almost _exactly_ what you said."

"I wouldn't expect _you_ to understand, James," Gary said. Jimmy wondered if there was any medication Gary could be put on to keep him from being such a patronizing cunt. "Think of it as..." He furrowed his brows, reaching for the right word. " _Repentance_."

"Leading him on is repentance?"

"No, he's not a _complete_ idiot. He knows it's not like that. I'm letting him pine after me—"

Jimmy bristled. " _Letting_ him—"

"—and in exchange, I have someone to talk to so that I don't go completely insane in this fucking house. That's it."

Jimmy felt sharply, inexplicably irritated by this, could almost not believe Gary's arrogance despite having been the victim of it on many occasions. A little, forgiving part of him wanted to believe this was all posturing on Gary's part—after all, he could _easily_ believe that Gary truly desired companionship, especially considering he didn't have many other options besides Pete. There were options aside from manipulation, though, but before Jimmy could give voice to the many threats that came to mind, all centered around a plea for Gary to refrain from manipulating Pete, Pete himself returned, and that conversation fell by the wayside through necessity alone. If Pete had heard any of their conversation he didn't show it, just sat on his own in the big armchair and clutched his his glass of water tightly.

That seemed to be their agreed-upon formation. A terse, awkward triangle. In any room they occupied, that was how they would wind up, three drifting buoys in a sea.

"So you seeing anyone, Jim?" Gary asked cordially, playing nice in Pete's presence.

"Yep. Vance Medici," Jimmy said, before Gary could ask. He found himself far more willing to share than usual, if only so that he could keep the focus of the conversation off Petey for a bit.

"Really? That greaseball?"

"He graduated."

"So?"

"So he kind of grew out of that."

"Is there some kind of queer bug going around that I just narrowly missed or something?"

Jimmy shrugged. "It's just how things worked out."

That seemed to be enough for Gary, and he dropped the subject readily enough. The rest of the night followed in a similar fashion, in the fashion all of the visits they'd ever had followed. Without Gary's mother there to mediate, every minute that passed wore long and heavy on Jimmy—every move Gary made, everything he said, seemed like an elaborate act for Jimmy's eyes only. _Look, Jimmy. I'm being such a good boy, Jimmy. He's eating right out of my hand, Jimmy_. Whether there was some truth to this or he was just projecting, it became to much for him and he had to excuse himself to the bathroom at one point to escape, standing with his head leaned against the inside of the door until he thought a reasonable amount of time had passed. To his private joy, Pete announced that it was about time they got going when he returned. Jimmy didn't need to be told twice, and they said their hasty goodbyes.

On the highway, Pete snapped the radio off and said, "Gary kissed me."

Jimmy stared, but somehow he wasn't surprised. "When I was in the bathroom?"

Pete nodded.

"He just came over and did it. It was...fast."

"Really."

"Mhm."

"Did he say anything?"

"He said like, 'I just want to see', or something, I don't remember exactly." Pete paused. "And he asked if it made me feel anything, and not to lie. And I was like, 'Yeah, a little', and then I asked him if he felt anything and he said 'no'." His voice wavered almost imperceptibly.

Jimmy was grateful then for sheer luck with relationships up until that point. He tried to imagine how Pete was feeling and almost couldn't, his experience with being unwanted too sparse to draw from. More than anything, he felt angry at Gary. He'd been right. Gary was stringing Pete along.

Pete's trembling hand folded out toward him in the darkness, palm up, and it took Jimmy's eyes a second to adjust enough to see that it was empty.

"Can you hold my hand for a sec?"

"What?"

"It doesn't have to be weird unless you make it weird."

"It's weird all on its own."

"Please. I'm gonna freak out or something. Just for a minute."

Pete's hand was no smaller than his own but it looked tiny resting palm-up on the center console like that. Jimmy sighed and took it.

"No kissing, though."

"Jimmy, don't fucking make fun of me right now!" Pete said, but the demand crumbled and he laughed a little. That was Jimmy's job done, as far as he was concerned. He continued to hold Pete's hand as he leaned with his head against the passenger window. He couldn't be completely sure, but he thought it was still there as he fell asleep.


	9. You! Me! Dancing!

_**SUMMER, 2008 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 9**_

 _"And if only there were clothes on the floor, I'd feel for certain I was bedroom dancing."  
_ Los Campesinos!, "You! Me! Dancing!" - _Hold on Now, Youngster,_ 2008

* * *

Over the next few days, all of Jimmy's more subtle advances on Vance were quietly but firmly impeded—Vance, it seemed, by some logic unknowable to Jimmy, wanted to take things slow, but there was only so much more of _slow_ that Jimmy could take, and the very first time Vance initiated, Jimmy pounced.

They were in Vance's living room. His apartment was very, very small, but neat. With Vance in the shower Jimmy felt free to shamelessly look through the handful of things placed on the mantelpiece in the common living space. It wasn't a proper mantelpiece as Vance, of course, had no fireplace, really just a waist-high molded shelf on which things could be placed. Mostly it held books, and the titles— _Dante's Inferno, The Kite Runner, The Harvard Classics English Poetry: Collins to Fitzgerald_ —could have belonged to anyone, gave Jimmy no sense of Vance-ness. There were a handful of photographs as well, family members that Jimmy did not know. A picture on the end of the mantel of Vance, looking very young and smiling, besides an astonishingly innocent-looking Johnny Vincent, made him smile.

He heard Vance call him from his room but Jimmy couldn't quite make out what he said and was busy besides, so he didn't respond. He heard muffled footsteps behind him, saw Vance's hands land beside where his own rested on top of the mantel. Felt Vance's lower body gently press into him from behind, felt his shower-wet hair graze against the nape of his neck.

Any other time he might have considered patience, to whatever degree he was able, but once again he had allowed Gary Smith to _get_ to him, and even days later he was bristling still, like a nervous animal. There were only a few ways he knew of for battling a feeling like that. He turned, slipped his arms around Vance's neck, pulled his mouth down to his. He wanted to be as unambiguous as possible so he slipped his hand beneath the front of Vance's waistband.

"Wait, sweetheart," Vance said, grabbing his wrist.

"I don't want to."

Jimmy couldn't see his own face, wasn't sure what look exactly he gave Vance that made him finally back down. But he did.

* * *

His fingers were shaking a little the whole time. It was, of course, not the first time he'd been naked before a lover, but somehow it felt like it.

"You haven't done this?" Vance asked, sitting on the foot of his bed.

Jimmy thought of Zoe. "Not with a guy."

"That's okay," Vance said as he pulled off his clothes, tore open a condom while looking incredible doing it. What little shyness Jimmy felt evaporated when Vance pulled him toward him and began to touch him, rolling the condom on. His breath caught in his throat, and Vance grinned up at him. He laid back, pulled Jimmy in, kissed him, reached between them and guided Jimmy close.

"Wait," Jimmy said. "Do you have any..."

"Just spit."

"I...what?"

"Here," Vance said, leaning up and showing him.

Jimmy looked down. "Oh."

Vance's hand came to rest on Jimmy's hips. He was looking at Jimmy with an expression Jimmy couldn't place then, though later it would be clear as day to him that Vance was suddenly stricken—and terrified—by Jimmy's relative innocence.

"You sure you want to do this?"

"Of course."

"Because I don't want you to feel like—"

The last bit of Jimmy's patience was pulling thin. He overcame Vance, pushed him down into the bed. "You think I don't know when I want something?" he asked.

"That's not what I meant."

"When I want something I get it, and you've seen me do it," Jimmy said.

"Alright, Jimmy," Vance said, struggling to maintain some sense of levity, but he was grinning, and visibly aroused, and as Jimmy's hand slipped around his cock the desire in his eyes became undeniable.

The next part, strictly speaking, was not something Jimmy had done before, but it was close, and with the help of the spit he slipped inside Vance, and then what felt like only a few moments of gripping, and gasping, and Vance's hands on him, was enough to put Jimmy over the edge.

"Fuck," he whispered, for multiple reasons.

Vance laughed as Jimmy slipped away and clattered onto the bed beside him, breathing hard.

"Don't laugh at me!"

"I'm not laughing at you, honey," he said.

Jimmy looked over at Vance, his flushed face, let his gaze fall to his cock. He was still erect. _Oh, right,_ he thought.

"You just gonna stare at it or are you going to do something about it?" Vance asked, that amused smile on his face again. And so Jimmy leaned over Vance's hips and tried another thing for the first time, took to him the way he took to anything that made him feel in control of something, until it throbbed, suckled the nerve-hot flesh until Vance was smacking him and begging him to stop.

"Jesus, it's sensitive."

"I don't care," Jimmy said, but he let up.

Things continued like that for days. Instead of his pure lust for Vance slowly being worked out of his system, it only seemed to get stronger as he grew more and more bold. He showed up at Vance's workplace to torment him, made up imaginary problems with his imaginary car and touching his hand too often as Vance's boss watched them suspiciously. He put his hands on Vance any chance he got. Possessiveness was nothing new to Jimmy but he almost scared himself when he looked at Vance when they were together sometimes, seeing his name in Vance's mouth, eyes vacant and glistening, and all because of him. Had he been older he would've simply enjoyed it until things went wrong the way they tend to. But he was freshly seventeen, and so he mistook it for love.

One afternoon as they were laying side by side, Vance said "Could you imagine having a kid now?"

"I'm sorry?"

"Like, having a kid at this age."

"What on earth are you asking me? You know I've still got cum all over me, right?"

Vance sighed, but he hauled himself to his feet and returned with a warm, damp towel, and proceeded to clean Jimmy's stomach and chest. It didn't beat fucking, of course, but Jimmy liked this part of sex a lot. The warm towel felt good and Vance...well, Vance looked good doing anything. His rusty hair had fallen out of place, his green eyes shadowy in the dark.

"I was asking because Johnny has a kid now."

This was certainly news. "Johnny Vincent?"

"Yep. With Lola."

" _What?_ "

"No," Vance said, grinning wolfishly. "I'm kidding. His wife's name is Victoria. You don't know her. She's very nice."

"Oh."

"The _baby's_ name is Lola."

Johnny grabbed the towel from Vance and whipped him with it. " _Stop_."

"Alright, alright!" He wrestled the towel from Jimmy and flung it aside, an action that seemed a bit unsanitary to Jimmy considering the towel's contents. Vance began pulling his clothes back on. "Anyway, I only asked because I'm heading upstate to see him this weekend. His birthday is coming up." He tugged the zipper up on his jeans, added: "His daughter's just a few months old."

"Wow."

"Yep. He met Victoria a few days after graduation. We all went to this party because Hal knew someone there, and things just happened one after another. She told him she was pregnant a couple weeks later and he proposed to her that day."

"Sounds like Johnny."

"For sure." He finished buttoning up his shirt, smoothed his hair down in the mirror.

"Do you want me to go?"

"Yeah, I was gonna ask."

"I dunno," Jimmy said. He pulled himself up, stretched. The concept of visiting Johnny Vincent on such domestic terms seemed strange, almost daunting. "We were never really friends."

"He won't mind if you're there with me. And besides," Vance added, giving him a cocky, sideway glance. "I've always had a thing for you, and he knew it. He won't be _that_ surprised to see you."

Jimmy mulled it over. He couldn't strictly say that he missed Johnny…but he was intrigued, to say the least.

As if sensing Jimmy's hesitation, Vance added, "You can bring Pete, even."

* * *

The drive up to Kinallen via I-93 was just under three hours. Jimmy hadn't been that far up the panhandle since the year he and his mother lived in Berlin when he was seven, an experience he barely remembered save for hazy memories of wide roads lined with red brick facades, and tall churches, and being one of the only kids in his class who couldn't speak any French at all. He'd surrendered shotgun to Pete so he could have the backseat to himself, and as he drifted in and out of sleep he caught snippets of the dense forest outside, and of Pete and Vance's conversation. Their words were unintelligible in his half-conscious state, but he could tell that Pete was comfortable—pleased, even—so Jimmy was content. Pete didn't tend to get along with his friends, so this was a welcome change.

When he woke up, the dense forest had given way to slopes dotted by the occasional, greenery-camouflaged house, and the Androscoggin River to the east. Pete was rattling off facts about the river, how the name was derived from an Algonquian dialect and meant "river rock shelters", and how it had been densely polluted by the mills along the river banks, so densely that the fish couldn't breath without human intervention anymore.

"Suffocating fish. That's nice."

"You're awake," Pete said, craning his neck to see Jimmy. "We're almost there." He had something in his lap, and he showed Jimmy.

"Are those flashcards?"

"I'm brushing up on my French."

"You know the people up here speak Canadian French, not European French? And, you know...English?" Jimmy asked.

Pete shrugged. Jimmy caught Vance's eye in the rearview mirror, could see that he was smiling.

They passed a faded wooden sign that read KINALLEN, and INCORPORATED 1838, and slowly the countryside turned to a small residential district. They passed a gas station, tall churches, a little restaurant with a hand-painted sign out front advertising clam strips. Jimmy tried to imagine Johnny, as he'd known him, eating at the little alfresco seating area outside the restaurant, or buying cigarettes at the gas station, and couldn't.

The house they finally pulled up to was small, moss green with white trim, two stories, and could have been pretty if it wasn't so run-down. The wooden steps leading up to the recessed doorway were painted a different shade of green than the rest of the house. There were cars parked up and down the street.

The three of them sat in the Cougar as Vance snapped the engine off. It was pleasantly warm out, and Vance slid his flannel shirt off, leaving just a t-shirt underneath. Jimmy wanted a moment with Vance alone but he couldn't expect Pete to go up first, so he shoved open his door and climbed out, trying his best not to look like he was intimidated by the thought of going up to the door alone.

* * *

Johnny's wife, it turned out, was actually from Quebec, and so were her family, who were the source of the cars parked outside, and some of the older members of her family didn't speak any English at all. Jimmy, at the mercy of one of Pete's now practiced I-fucking- _told_ -you looks, spent ten minutes speaking to one of Victoria's aunts, who talked too fast and referred to Johnny as "John", before he excused himself and slipped out the first exit he could find. It led out to a small backyard—no more than twenty square feet of trimmed grass, an unsafe-looking trampoline, all bordered by a fence made of tightly-placed, dog-ear wooden slats. Some lawn chairs were circled around a fire pit, and he lowered himself into one. He hadn't been to many family reunions as his mother wasn't the reunion-ing type, but of the few he'd attended he hadn't liked a single one, and was beginning to remember why.

After a few minutes of relative peace, the back door cracked open.

"There you are." Johnny Vincent pushed the door out on its rusting hinges, slipped into the backyard, nudged the door shut again with the toe of his boot. He wiggled a box of cigarettes from the pocket of his jeans, held them out to Jimmy. "You smoke?" he asked. Jimmy took one, let him light it. Johnny settled himself into the chair nearest him at the fire pit, a few feet away, and settled into his own cigarette.

Jimmy had expected to find Johnny as imposing as ever, maybe even more so against such a suburban backdrop, and instead was struck with the impression of someone who had shrunk to fit his surroundings. This was despite the fact that Johnny's appearance, for the most part, was exactly as Jimmy remembered—his fringed, neat brown hair, the silver hoop in his ear, the hard set of his face, all the same. The only real difference was the lack of leather, in its place a dark gray Henley, pushed up to the elbows, and the shadowy impression around the eye area characteristic of the sleep-deprived.

Even with that perceived slightness about him, Johnny seemed out of place. Everything about him—from the way he clamped down too hard on the cigarette, to the way he gripped the molded plastic armrest on his chair too tightly, to the old pale scars on his hands and up his arms from so many fights and wipe-outs—screamed _they made me somewhere else._

Eventually, Johnny broke the silence. "It's actually kind of nice to see you," he said, as though fully surprised by his own capability to feel such positive emotion toward Jimmy.

"Back at you," Jimmy said.

Johnny took a long pull from his cigarette. "So you're with Vance now?" _With_ came out as _wit_ , even his accent too hard and clipped for this place.

"Mhm."

Johnny exhaled, grinned suddenly. "You know, he used to call you, 'that cute little redhead' all the time. Even when we were all supposed to hate you." Jimmy smiled at that, unable to help himself. "I think he just kept forgetting your name."

They smoked in silence for another moment or two..

"You still gettin' in fights?" Johnny asked.

"You know everybody asks me that when they see me?"

"Well, shit, who can blame them? You beat the shit out of me a few times. Laid Vance out a couple times, too. That anything I need to be worrying about?"

Jimmy didn't realize Johnny was kidding until he looked over and saw him smirking. "You calling me a wifebeater?" he asked, which got a laugh, his goal.

Johnny shook his head. "Just givin' you a hard time. People ask me the same shit. That's what we get."

More silence, though a little more comfortable this time. As far as rivalries went, Jimmy had never outright hated Johnny.

Johnny glanced over his shoulder at the backdoor. "Can I talk to you about him?"

"Vance? Sure. Of course."

Johnny looked at him, brow furrowed, seemed to be sizing him up. Jimmy merely looked back at him, accustomed to this.

"Don't tell anyone I told you this," Johnny began, which Jimmy found promising.

"Not even Vance?"

"Well, that's up to you. It's about him. He might hate me a little for telling you this, but fuck it, it's my secret, too," Johnny said. He ashed his cigarette into the fire pit, leaned back. "I'll just spit it right out. Back when we were freshman in high school, me and Vance, he wasn't really sure how he felt about men. He didn't know who he could tell. And I got the two of us a little bit wasted one night, and he…" he gestured through the air, as thought looking for the appropriate descriptor. "…came onto me. Pretty full on, as well. And I didn't take it too well." Johnny smiled bitterly. "Actually, that's sugar-coating it. I took it really bad. I said some…really cruel shit to him. You know what I mean? You can imagine."

"Anyway, I hurt him bad. We've known each other for so long, you know. Since we were real small. I knew I fucked up, and fucked _him_ up, and I came around to it fast, but…you know, sticks and stones is all bullshit, and words really do hurt. You're getting ash on your leg," he said suddenly, gesturing at Jimmy's cigarette, dangling absently over his knee. Jimmy flicked the cigarette into the fire pit.

Johnny continued. "It's no way to treat your own. I'm never hurting him like that again, and part of that is making sure nobody else gets at him like that neither. I don't run with no gang anymore but him, Peanut, Lefty, all the guys, they've all been there forever. I've got my daughter, and I've got my sons, you hear what I'm sayin'?" He grinned a little, acknowledging the mawkishness of the sentiment, but Jimmy could tell it was rooted in the truth.

Jimmy wasn't entirely stupid and he knew that anyone could level any manner of criticism at him and have a solid chance of hitting somewhere in the vicinity of the truth. But for all his flaws, he'd learned a thing or two about taking care of his own, and after spending so much time looking after the wrong people he was determined to cast his net a little closer, and do things right. As much as Johnny was the same as ever, Jimmy could sense that some small metamorphosis had taken place in him since they'd last seen each other, was probably still in the process of taking place. But that desire to take care of his people—that was something Jimmy suspected had been there for a very long time.

"I hear what you're saying," Jimmy said.

* * *

The three of them, Jimmy and Vance and Pete, wound up staying the latest, not leaving until long after Victoria's assortment of relatives had long since trickled out and the sun had fallen to its early evening height. The actual party had been the kind of strained ordeal that parties populated by near-strangers tended to be, with Johnny looking quietly mortified by the attention. The big sheet cake prepared in his honor read HAPPY BIRTHDAY JOHN.

 _A mundane name for a mundane man_ , Jimmy thought, disturbing himself a little bit. He imagined the cake with his own name spelled out in frosting, _happy birthday, James_. He had never felt like a James, and he figured Johnny didn't particularly feel like a John either.

As the procession filtered out after the party, Victoria—who was mousy-haired, pretty, and, aside from her height, so unalike Lola that she almost looked out of place in her own home, in the presence of Johnny—asked for stories, and they told them. Johnny didn't hide anything from her, it seemed, and she knew so many of them, even the embarrassing ones, but the new perspective brought by Jimmy's retellings had her nearly in tears from laughing. Johnny looked over at her a lot, squeezed her hand, squeezed her shoulder anytime he walked by. Jimmy wanted to ask about Lola but decided to practice a little propriety for once, figured he could ask Vance to fill in the gaps.

When they finally left it was nearly seven. Vance stood in the doorway for a long time, kissed Victoria on the cheek and Charlie on the forehead. "Be good to your daddy," he said to her. Jimmy had been there for hours, had held Charlotte himself, and yet somehow that was what really flung it home. _Johnny is someone's dad now. Johnny is a dad forever._

When Vance got to Johnny he pulled him in his arms, squeezed. He said something to him that Jimmy couldn't hear and which, he figured, wasn't really meant for anyone besides Johnny anyway.

"Take care," Vance said as he backed down the green front steps, with something in his voice that Jimmy wasn't really equipped to understand. Johnny just nodded. He waved as they pulled away and then slipped back inside, flicked the porch light off, and then the Cougar turned off their street and the Vincent house disappeared from sight.

* * *

Vance was noticeably pensive on the drive home. Pete had to tell him three times that he was nearly out of gas. By the time they finally found a station to pull into, they were running on fumes. With twenty dollars in the tank Vance pulled the car around the side of the little convenience store, glowing fluorescent-ly against the ever-advancing evening.

"I'll be right back," Vance said, putting the car in park and ducking out. Pete unbuckled his seatbelt, hauled himself awkwardly over the armrest console, out of the passenger side and into the backseat.

"Make room," he said.

Jimmy squeezed against the door as Pete stretched across the backseat and propped his legs up between the front seats. "What are you doing?"

"I'm getting comfy, dude."

"I'm already back here!"

"Feel free to move up front."

Jimmy liked his legroom though, and admittedly didn't need much of it, so it was easy enough to swivel his legs out and beneath Pete's while still remaining comfortable. Vance was taking a pretty long time. Jimmy could feel himself slowly dozing off.

"What did you think of Johnny?" Jimmy said.

Pete blinked at him. "I dunno. Last time I saw him before this I was helping you kick his shit in."

"You think he remembered you?"

"Nah, people usually don't," Pete said easily. He folded his hands over his stomach. "Kind of weird seeing him like that, you know? He's pretty different now and its only been a year. But he still _looks_ the same. It's like...it's hard not comparing him to the past when the old Johnny is _right_ there."

"I know what you mean."

"You know I found all kinds of drugs in his house?"

Jimmy started. "What?"

"I mean like, prescription."

"Oh," Jimmy said, relaxing. "What for?"

"I dunno, someone caught me snooping and yelled at me. In French. I think."

"You _think_?"

"It was certainly French to me."

Jimmy couldn't say he was particularly surprised to hear that Johnny was on medication, if the medication was indeed for Johnny. "It's for the anger, I bet. Like, antidepressants."

"Maybe," Pete said. Then: "He seemed kind of happy."

He had seemed happy. Run-down, and probably overworked—Jimmy realized he'd never asked what Johnny had wound up doing for a living, thought he might have overheard him discussing welding with someone—but happy.

"You think we'll ever have kids?" Pete asked.

"What, together?"

"No, I meant—"

Jimmy smacked Pete's shin. "I know, idiot, I'm giving you a hard time." He thought about it. He couldn't imagine having children, though he supposed Johnny hadn't imagined it when he was seventeen either. He thought it could be nice. He also thought it could be a nightmare. "I dunno if I want that much responsibility over another human. Even a tiny dumb one."

"Yeah, maybe," Pete said.

Jimmy thought about Zoe for some reason, imagined what she might be like as a mom. He couldn't really imagine her any way other than the way he'd known her, and it was a pretty discomforting fantasy, that Zoe as a mother. He decided she might not be a good mother, but then he reasoned that a lot of good mothers didn't start off that way. His own mother wasn't a good mother. At least not all the time. Jimmy realized he wasn't really sure what constituted being a "good mother", or a good father for that matter. Or a good person.

He didn't want to think about his mom and stepdad, so he changed the subject. "Thanks for coming out with me and Vance, by the way."

"Yeah, of course," Pete said. "I owe you after dragging you out to see Gary so often."

At the mention of Gary, Jimmy felt some other mild anxiety bloom inside of him. Such was the price of having friends he actually could stand, apparently—their pain was his now. "What are you gonna do about the whole Gary thing?" Jimmy actually wanted to talk about it, get that nonsense squared away with some kind of plan so if they had to see Gary again, they'd at least know how to deal with him.

Pete, to his relief, merely sighed. "I dunno. I haven't called him since then. Not that I call him that often anyway. I mean I guess I could just never talk to him again. That's a real solid plan."

"It's tempting," Jimmy admitted. "But you'll never move on if you just let it die like that."

"You don't think so?"

"I know so. Especially if you just keep pining after him."

"How do I not pine after someone, though? Like, it's pretty much my default state."

That was a pretty good question. "Have someone else to pine after, I guess."

"But there's no one else."

"Really?"

"Really."

 _That complicates things._ Jimmy mulled it over. "You know you have to actually talk to him then, right?"

"Fu-uck." Pete threw his head back. It thumped against his seat. "I don't know how to do that! I'm not the talky guy!"

"I know," Jimmy said. This was one thing he could sympathize with easily. He wasn't sure why he was being so encouraging of the prospect of having a nice sit-down chat with Gary Smith, but then he remembered what Johnny said about taking care of his own. "We'll worry about it when the times comes. And either way, whatever happens, I'll back you up."

"Really?"

"Yup."

"Nice," Pete said. He looked a little at ease, which was good with Jimmy. He looked out at the glowing storefront, tried to spot Vance inside. He thought about maybe going inside after all, grabbing something to eat, maybe trying to get a rise out of Vance by grabbing his ass in front of the cashier, but now that night had just about properly fallen he felt himself growing more and more tired. He willed himself to move and couldn't.

 _I'll get up in a moment,_ he thought, and then fell asleep.


	10. Laugh About It

_**SUMMER, 2008 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 10**_

 _"Someday I'll laugh about it, all that pressure stashed behind it. Couldn't it last like that? I doubt it. But c'mon girl, let's laugh about it!"  
_ N.E.R.D., "Laugh About It" - _Seeing Sounds,_ 2008

* * *

The rest of the summer passed much too fast, the way time often does when things are relatively easy and uncomplicated; the tedium of good times. He worked more, and worked harder, got back on Hector's good side. He let Pete teach him how to drive, something he'd only done a handful of times before, surreptitiously piloting Pete's car, taking turns too fast and narrowly missing obstacles a handful of times. He did his summer reading, usually alone but sometimes at Vance's place when he woke up long after Vance left for work, curling himself into Vance's side of the bed with _All the Pretty Horses_ propped open. He even took notes, sometimes.

Sometimes if they both woke in the middle of the night, twisted around each other, Jimmy would read poetry out loud to Vance, something it didn't occur to him to be embarrassed of until Vance said, the first time: "You like _poetry?_ "

"Uh...sometimes."

"Really."

"I like this kind." He'd finally bought his own copy of _What the Living Do_ , though he kept Zoe's page in his wallet still. "It doesn't rhyme. It's like reading someone's diary."

"That's a weird reason to like something."

"Yeah, maybe. Listen to this."

He flipped through for something short, settled on "The Last Time". It was just nine lines long, and when it ended, Vance said, "That was it?" And then, when Jimmy nodded: "Read it again."

He was quiet afterward. "That _is_ kind of nice."

"Right?"

"It's dark."

"They all are." He was laying with his head angled onto Vance's warm, bare shoulder.

"Read me another one."

Jimmy thumbed through for something suitable, stopped on "What the Living Do." It was one of the longer ones. He began to read.

"Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days..." He fell into the familiar cadence of the poem, almost didn't notice when Vance lifted a hand to cover his own face. He reached the end of the final stanza— _I am living, I remember you_ —and craned his head up to look at Vance, whose hand was still over his otherwise expressionless face. It was only much later that it occurred to Jimmy, clear as day, that Vance was trying very hard not to cry.

"You okay?"

"Mhm."

"You sure?"

"Yeah," Vance said, hand slipping from his eyes. "It's just the..." he trailed off, not looking at Jimmy. "Never mind."

Another time, Jimmy might have pushed him to speak his mind, but the pensiveness that had fallen over Vance since they'd left Johnny's house a few weeks ago had seemed to change something about Vance, settled a fundamental shift into their relationship, substantial but nearly imperceptible to Jimmy then. He looked over the poem again. _Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days..._

He felt stupid then, and guilty, but he didn't know how to apologize, and what for, without sounding even stupider. He closed the book, twisted around so that he was facing Vance, his chin propped on Vance's collarbone.

"Don't be sad," he said. Vance only looked back at him.

* * *

The second time he felt that familiar sensation that things had gone quietly and irreparably wrong was over the phone.

The beginning of his senior year fast approached, and the prospect of it seemed to settle some odd excitement into him every morning. The epithet itself seemed to carry great distinction— _senior—_ and the years he'd spent looking forward to the day he'd finally be allowed to leave the American K-12 education system behind forever only aggrandized it further. He'd begun spending less and less time loafing around with Pete and Vance and more time chipping away at his summer assignments and seriously investigating his options when it came to universities, if only to confirm which ones he had any hope of being considered for. For the past couple years he'd treated college talk as the minefield it was, skirting around the topic any chance he got. Now _he_ was the one who found himself bringing it up, to Hector as his shift wore down, or Pete, or Pete's parents, or Vance.

It was Vance that he was calling at just after five on a Monday. The main building at Bullworth had closed for the day, but Jimmy knew by then just about every way into the school, and he was able to sneak into the front office anyway to use their phone. He told Vance he was calling from Bullworth, and Vance said an unenthusiastic "Oh," and Jimmy, feeling a spark of irritation, pounced.

"Are you okay?"

"What? Of course I'm okay."

"You've been acting really weird."

"You think so?"

"Yeah." Jimmy thought about letting it drop but there was only so much caginess he could be expected to handle. "Ever since we went to see Johnny, actually."

A few moments of dead air and a heavy sigh was all the confirmation he needed. "Can we not do this over the phone?" Vance asked.

"Not do what? What's 'this'?"

"Argue, for one," Vance said.

"Are we arguing?"

"We might. Especially if I get fired because you keep callin' me at work."

Jimmy couldn't find a reasonable argument for that. "I just wanted to talk." His voice sounded small when he said it, which he hated.

"About?"

"About why you've been acting weird."

"Honey..." Vance said, very gently—probably, Jimmy thought, so that his boss would not overhear it, and whip the receiver out of his hands, but hearing it made his breath hitch all the same. Vance didn't say anything for so long that Jimmy almost thought he'd hung up.

"Are you still th—"

"Yeah, listen," Vance began. "Wait for me, okay? The shop closes pretty soon. I can come get you." He paused. "You're right. We should talk."

 _We should talk_. Jimmy felt strange hearing a cliche occur in real life. "Uh, okay. Sure. I'll see you."

"Okay," Vance said, and the line went dead, a suitably foreboding end to the conversation.

Jimmy had no further need for the school so he walked right out the front door, waving at the night janitor, who only stared for a moment before shaking her head and going back to her work. It was late August by then, so the sun was still very high, and bright, and hot. Jimmy was still in his work polo, and he peeled it off, leaving just his navy undershirt beneath. The sky was blue and cloudless, and even he could admit that Bullworth's campus looked absolutely beautiful on a day like this. The weather viewed from Bullworth always made him feel small, but where a cover of clouds only increased the vague sensation of being hopelessly imprisoned any time he was on campus, a deep blue sky like the one that day felt open, as though to remind everyone beneath it how much world existed around Bullworth. It made him feel small in a good way.

He wandered toward the parking lot, trying to fight back the feeling of dread rising from the pit of his stomach. There was only so much that could be done about conversations, as he well knew. He knew how to fight his way out of a messy situation, was figuring out how to fuck his way out of one as well. And, he supposed, there were some situations he could talk out of. But talking down an aggressor, or chatting his way out of being written up...he'd had time and practice to perfect those. There wasn't much in his arsenal available for overcoming a discussion where there was no real winner to be named. That was probably the hardest part about the whole mess. He knew how to win things. He didn't know what to do when there was nothing to be won.

Jimmy leaned against the wall just inside the parking lot, didn't even think about the cigarette when he put it to his lips. He was smoking a lot those days—he shook the carton, heard the tell-tale rattle that he was getting low. When had he started smoking? He couldn't really remember. He vaguely remembered his mother letting him smoke nearly a decade earlier, but that memory could just as easily have been him stealing an abandoned cigarette from an ashtray, foolishly left within his reach. He supposed, either way, he could blame his mother. But he didn't particularly want to.

Vance finally arrived as he was grinding the last of the first cigarette into the ground balancing another on his lip. Jimmy waved, ran to the car.

"Hi," Vance said thinly. Jimmy slipped inside, shut the passenger side door, and held out his cigarettes. Vance just shook his head.

"Where are we going?" Jimmy asked.

"Uh...nowhere, yet," Vance said. The sun streaming into the car lit up the dashboard, warmed the leather until it was nearly too hot to touch. Vance leaned back—he still wore the deep blue-gray jumpsuit, his name embroidered on the right side of his chest—and a shaft of light fell across his red hair, turning it from its typical copper to a more brilliant, rusty red. He wet his lips absentmindedly. Jimmy felt the overpowering urge to kiss him. _Of all the times to look this good..._

They sat in silence. Jimmy was discovering that relationships involved a lot of silence, something he'd never properly anticipated. At one point, Vance's finger twitched as though he wanted to grab Jimmy's hand, but nothing came of that. Finally, after a few minutes, Vance said:

"I have to be honest with you."

"Okay," was all Jimmy could say.

"I can't..." he began. He hesitated. "I _shouldn't_ ," he corrected,"be dating a high school boy."

 _Holy shit, he's breaking up with me._ His choice of words were not lost on Jimmy, who bristled. " _Shouldn't?_ "

Vance looked regretful but he doubled down, a tactic Jimmy was all too familiar with. "That's right."

"So this is a moral choice. You're protecting me."

"No, that's not what I—"

Jimmy steamrolled on, thoroughly aggravated. "Wow, Saint Vance. What would I do without you around to protect me from men barely two years older than me?"

"Two years is a long time at this age," Vance said. Jimmy wasn't buying it.

"What else?" he asked.

"What do you mean, what else?"

Jimmy fought back the urge to roll his eyes. "You're telling me you're…you're _breaking up_ with me for purely moral purposes?

Vance looked at him. "Of course not. It's practical, too. I mean, I remember what senior year was like, and I didn't even go to college. You're not gonna have time for me."

"You don't think I can make time?"

Vance bit the inside of his lip and looked away. Jimmy could believe that Vance was worried he'd lose time for him once school started again. Already they'd been spending less time together as his various summer project deadlines approached. But there was still _something else_. He couldn't imagine that Vance would look this troubled—frankly, this _guilty—_ purely for wanting to initiate a breakup for practical purposes, even if Vance's unease every time school entered the conversation hadn't escaped Jimmy's notice. Those dots had connected easily enough. He'd even thought about it himself—he would have a lot of work to do his final year of high school if he wanted to graduate on time, and would he even have time for Vance? He wasn't sure.

But those uncertainties were recent, and Vance's discomfort had begun ever since they left Johnny's.

 _Johnny._

Jimmy wanted to punch himself. He slammed his head back against his headrest. " _Fuck._ "

Vance jumped. "What?"

"Is it Johnny?"

Vance's eyes widened, just a little, but Jimmy knew he was on the right track. "Johnny told me about you and him."

" _What?"_

"He told me that...I mean, he didn't go into detail...he just said that he...really fucked with your head. Is that why? Are you just..." Jimmy struggled to put his thoughts to words. "...afraid I'll do something like that?"

"Oh, baby, that's not..." Vance put a hand over his eyes, sat back, shook his head. ". _..shit._ "

"What?" Jimmy had been sure that was it. Suddenly the growing pain at the back of his head where he'd whacked it against the seat felt less deserved. "What, then?"

Vance didn't say anything. His hand remained over his eyes.

The last vestiges of Jimmy's patience rushed away. " _What, then?_ "

Vance lowered his hand from his eyes. With an internal struggle so powerful that it was evident on his face, he said, "I'm not…at least, I don't think…I don't think I'm _over_ him."

Right there he said it, in the deserted staff parking lot at Bullworth, and Jimmy felt for the first time, in his limited experience, that he might have just had his heart properly broken. _Johnny, the kitchen sink has been clogged for days..._ The way he'd reacted when Jimmy read the poem before, bewildering then, suddenly made too much sense. Of _course_ he'd been trying not to cry.

Vance cried then, looking away from Jimmy, his jaw rigid and his face nearly emotionless as tears streaked down. Jimmy was familiar with those tears, as he suspected most people were, the tears shed by those who had done wrong and were in the presence of the wronged.

Jimmy didn't know what to say.

"I'm sorry," Vance said. His voice sounded hoarse.

"I know," Jimmy said, but he didn't, and wouldn't for years. How did he know that Vance was really sorry? He didn't. How did he know that Vance wasn't thinking about Johnny every time they kissed, every time they fucked? He didn't. Now, thinking of Johnny, he inexplicably thought of the Androscoggin River again, snaking past Johnny's home. His chest tight, he thought he had an idea for how all those suffocating fish must have felt. He wanted to slam his head against something again.

In life he'd figured out how to fight, but he'd also had ample opportunity to practice running away from things, and he chose that course of action now. He pawed at the passenger door latch, shoved the door open. "Well, bye," he choked.

"Jimmy!"

"See you around," he reiterated.

"Jimmy, wait, not yet," Vance said.

Jimmy knew that all he had to do was leap out the door and Vance wouldn't chase him, and he could go find somewhere to be alone where he could yell and destroy things until he felt a little bit better, if he ever even could. But Vance reached out, and grabbed his arm, and Jimmy let himself give into the familiar feeling of his grip for just a moment, and the feeling snowballed just enough to pacify him. Not completely, but enough.

He eased back into the passenger seat and shut the door.

Vance's face was streaked with tears now, his eyes red, his nose red, his cheekbone on the right side a little red from where he must have wiped some tears away. His eyes and lips glistened.

"I don't want it to end like this," Vance said.

Jimmy made up his mind right away. He wasn't entirely a lost cause when it came to making tough decisions. All those times he'd gone with Pete to see Gary when he could have easily stayed home, or stayed inside and studied when he could've been doing anything else...those were tough decisions. At least for him. But here he made the choice without even considering others, confirmed the first option that entered his head, measured against his oldest and most trusted device: _Just do what you want_.

"Okay, then," Jimmy said. "We won't." And he took Vance by the collar and closed the space between them.

The proceedings just seemed _right_ to Jimmy. He leaped the armrest console into the backseat, hauled Vance back there with him.

"Not here..." Vance said.

"Here," Jimmy said.

"What if someone sees?"

"Don't worry about that," Jimmy insisted, peeling his shirt off. It was easy enough to get Vance to submit, Jimmy found, especially considering he had a good idea for what Vance liked by then. He unclasped Vance's coveralls, slipped his hands inside, feeling his shirt and the warmth beneath. He pulled Vance's neck down to his lips. "Worry about me right now."

"Jimmy, please," Vance said, resisting.

"Please, what?"

" _Not_ here."

This part of the whole thing was close enough to a fight, was physical, at least, and Jimmy knew what to do. He secured his hand low on the back of Vance's neck and rolled him, pinned him to the seat with his knees on either side of Vance's hips.

"Tell me you don't actually want me right now," Jimmy said into his neck.

"Stop. For fuck's sake," Vance whispered, but he could barely speak, so Jimmy already knew he was winning.

"I mean it." Jimmy pulled away so he could look at him. "Look at me and tell me you don't want me to fuck you right now and I'll leave. But you'll never see me again," he said, hating how melodramatic he sounded. But he knew it was true. He wasn't the kind of person who got to properly say goodbye to people. He'd learned that now.

Vance's hands had come to rest on Jimmy's sides, then they climbed up his chest, and his shoulders, until they reached his face.

"Fine," he finally said.

If it was up to Jimmy, the final time would have been the best, and the hardest, and the loudest, gripping one another hard enough to leave bruises, gripping the way he'd grip anything he didn't want to let go of that was threatening to slip away from him. But spontaneity came with a price, and neither of them had come prepared for anything like this. Breaking up with Vance, it seemed, called for his entire skill set, and he would have to improvise—which, when it came to sex, wasn't too particularly daunting a task at all.

In hindsight he couldn't strictly say it was emotional, at least not in the sense of sadness. Maybe if they'd had more time together, more time to build up what they were now in the process of cutting down. But the only thing he felt beside lust was a minute anger that flourished from time to time, grew stronger as matters progressed, as he kicked off his jeans and settled himself against Vance, slicking his hand around both of them with his free hand braced against Vance's shoulder.

He came before Vance, sweating and tense, his face buried in Vance's neck, and he had half a mind to give into the throes of his admittedly mediocre orgasm and collapse against Vance completely (an act that seemed too intimate considering the circumstances), and half a mind to wipe himself off, tug his jeans back on, and leave Vance sticky and unfulfilled in the back of his own car. He could settle for a middle ground; obligingly, he fell to the floor of the car beside Vance, and finished him off with his hands. He had come to enjoy teasing Vance, after the first time he'd done it, and any other time he might have kept going until Vance pleaded with him to stop. Now, he released Vance the moment he climaxed, his obligation done. Vance watched him pull himself back up onto the backseat, watched him straighten his shirt and pull his jeans back on. Jimmy grabbed Vance's own shirt off the floor, flicked it at him.

Vance clumsily began to dress himself. _Are you thinking about him now,_ Jimmy thought abruptly, and he very nearly said it out loud, but just the thought alone brought him such a feeling of shame that it made him want to hide his face. He'd feel a twinge of that shame every time he recalled the memory, even years later, and each time would thank whatever deities existed that he'd kept that one to himself.

"I guess you should go," Vance said, when he was finally dressed.

Jimmy was too spent to speak, or, at least, this was how he rationalized how quickly he chose to leave. He couldn't say _nothing_ , he figured, and he leaned back into the door before he left for good and said the only thing he could really think of.

"Take care of yourself."

* * *

The phone at Pete's house rang well after midnight that night. Jimmy couldn't sleep, and he was the first one on it.

"It's Jimmy." Maybe an unusual way to answer a phone that didn't belong to him, but he had a feeling he already knew who was calling at two in the morning.

"You have things at my place still."

"Oh."

"You don't have to come get them right now. I just wanted you to know."

Jimmy was struck in the way he often seemed to be in those days by a mess of firsts. Mundane objects, months worth of miscellany casually abandoned in Vance's room, in his kitchen, were now "his things", by virtue of being in someone else's place. He'd never had a drawer of things at someone's place before, hadn't had the presence of mind to appreciate the idea that part of Vance's room was dedicated to him now—if only for that summer, he'd become a fixture in Vance's life, a physical thing that Vance's own trajectory had to bend to accommodate.

He'd never had to retrieve his things from someone else's place, either.

The thought had more of a poetic quality than a real emotional one, and, not for the first time and certainly not the last, he found himself thinking that all things considered, it could have definitely been worse. _Only a few months_ , he rationalized. _Any longer and then it'd really hurt._

"I'll be right there," Jimmy said, and he eased the receiver back onto the cradle.


	11. Caring is Creepy (Winter 2001)

_**WINTER, 2001  
**_ _ **Chapter 11**_ _ **  
**_

 _"Far above our heads are the icy heights that contain all reason."  
_ The Shins, "Caring is Creepy" - _Oh, Inverted World,_ 2001

* * *

When asked to recall a memory about his mother, Jimmy wrote, in the little blue test booklet provided by Mr. Galloway: "In my nearly 18 years of living, my mother has tried to kill me at least a dozen times, and only once did she nearly succeed." He knew when Mr. Galloway reached his essay as he thumbed through his grading stack during their fifteen-minute reading period because he chuckled out loud, a surprised snort of laughter. After class he called him over and told him it was his best yet. "You're a talented writer, Jimmy," he said. "You've got an observant eye."

Jimmy embellished the story a little for the sake of the assignment, but the rest of the story goes, more or less, like this:

The time his mother nearly killed him had been in the little gray hatchback Jimmy knew for a good chunk of his early childhood. When he thought of car rides he still thought right back to that car, the flat vinyl backseat piled with their belongings and him in the center of it all, watching the blue-orange light of the city peak in through the back windows until it faded into the highway.

He spent a lot of time in that car, his mother smoking in the front seat. She rolled the window down but the smell found its way to him all the same. In terms of practicality, it was not a safe vehicle, and was constantly breaking down in ways he couldn't have begun to understand. His mother wasn't much better off, although she knew some things. Husband #2 had been, in her words, "a car guy", though whether that meant a hobbyist or a mechanic, Jimmy wasn't sure—Husband #2 had been before his time.

Despite its abundance of hazards, Jimmy still felt inexplicably safe when he was inside. His mother openly, vocally hated it, but Jimmy was ten the day he almost died, and warmth and familiarity were enough for him.

He was in the narrow backyard of their second proper house, in Fremont (though, strictly speaking, it's wasn't _theirs_ , as they rented it, and technically they only paid for one room, which they shared). The house was one story, painted a weak, denim blue. A winter storm had passed just days prior, and he was piling snow on top of the old stone birdbath that never seemed to attract any birds. School didn't always cancel for snow that far north, but Jimmy had just gotten lucky, he'd figured, and that day it had.

He was kneeling in the snow when his mother cracked the backdoor, quietly called his name. She was always referring to the car as "the fucking car", or "that fucking car". They both did, in fact—she hated the car so much that she didn't even mind if Jimmy swore at it. Now, she hissed: _"Get your things and get in the fucking car."_

Jimmy was well-acquainted with his mother's "urgent" voice by then, and he did as he was told, though not without complaining every step of the way. His things were few and he was packed in minutes.

"Got everything?" she asked. He simply nodded, looking at her own suitcase.

"What's wrong?" he asked, but she ignored him, took his arm and made for the door. In the car, he realized as she struggled to start the engine that they hadn't brought anything else with them.

"Mom, are we bringing the globe?" he asked.

"No, Jimmy."

The globe was big and off-white, with raised bumps to designate mountain ranges, and was one of her favorite things.

Flustered, he asked, "What about the scrapbook?"

"I've got it, Jimmy. _Fucking_ car." The engine scratched, whined. Something under the hood gurgled.

"Give it gas," Jimmy said. He had no idea what the meant, only that she was supposed to do it.

"Right," she said. She turned the key forward, nudged the brake, and finally the engine came to life. She leaned back, letting the engine run with the gas held down until it could idle on its own. She looked at him in the rear view mirror. Her eyeshadow, reddish-brown that day, was smudged.

"What's wrong?" Jimmy asked again.

He knew he couldn't expect much. "We've got to move on again," she said, and that was about enough.

"Did I get expelled?"

She laughed, a sound of surprise more than amusement. "No, Jimmy. This one's on me."

"Oh."

After the engine was suitably warmed she urged the car away from the curb in front of the one-story house they'd called home for a little less than a year. They had no snow tires, no chains, no four-wheel drive—nothing. Once they got out to the main roads, all plowed and salted early in the mornings, they'd be alright, but getting out of the residential area would be difficult. The car fishtailed a few times, but the roads widened and finally emptied into a street lined with small businesses. His mother audibly sighed with relief.

They stopped for gas, and breakfast. The sense of urgency from before seemed to have evaporated, but his mother was still tense, glancing at her watch over and over again.

Back on the road, the main street eventually rolled out into the highway, and Jimmy felt the familiar tedium of a long trip settling in. He leaned his face against the door, his nose against the window. Before long, he'd fallen asleep.

He awoke to his mother unbuckling his seat belt.

"Wake up, Jimmy. We're stuck."

He blinked at her, bleary-eyed. "Stuck?" He looked around, trying to recall where he'd been when he fell asleep. Outside was totally white at first, and rubbing his eyes didn't seem to help.

He slid from his seat and into the snow, shuffling around to the front of the car. They were on the side of the road. Snow-covered trees stretched skyward as far as he could see.

"Look at that," his mother said roughly, lighting a cigarette. She pointed at the tire nearest him; there was a smooth wet patch beneath it, which he later understood was snow that had melted away from the heat of the spinning tires as she tried and failed to get them unstuck.

"What do we do?"

"Grab the mats from the back," she said. He climbed inside the car and pulled up the rubber mats from the floor between the front and back seat. She took them, crouched down and tucked them behind the rear tires. "Now we can drive out," she said.

Back inside the car, she started the engine, said "Cross your fingers," and backed slowly over the mats. Without much more trouble, they were clear.

"You did it!" Jimmy said.

"See?" she said. She angled the car toward the highway. "Your mom knows a _few_ things."

"Did you learn that from the car guy?" Jimmy asked. He didn't hear her answer.

It's such a _cliche_ , is all he could think sometimes when he looked back on it. He figured that if you looked closely enough, life was throwing cliches at everyone all the time, one after another, and it was just sometimes that people noticed it and sometimes they didn't.

He wasn't really awake for most of it. He was confident that he never actually saw the SUV curve off the road and right into them, though the image certainly appeared in his nightmares enough. He remembered a loud crunching of metal like an enormous soda can being crushed, and his mother screaming. The pain, thankfully, he couldn't remember at all, although he supposed you couldn't really properly remember _any_ pain, not quite the way it felt when you actually experienced it. He also remembered how everything looked when the car was upside down, for those moments he was lucid, the spiderwebbing cracks across the front windshield, and somehow that memory was the scariest of them all.

When he woke up properly, he was in the hospital. He had bruises all over him, and he was sore. His scalp had been split open along his hairline, above his left eye. There were stitches there that he was instructed not to touch. He was told by his mom, and a nurse, and then a doctor, that he did not have brain damage and he might be concussed but they were fairly confident he'd gotten lucky and was alright. His mother sat by his bedside when the doctor cleared out after telling her not to light a cigarette in the hospital, please. Now that they were alone, he wanted to ask her again why they'd left Fremont. When he thought about that day he would wonder, were those bruises from the crash, or had they been there before? He tried to remember and couldn't seem to place them in time. Maybe the bruise on her cheekbone was from the impact, but maybe he'd seen it when she looked at him in the rear view mirror, or when she watched him wolf down his breakfast when they stopped for gas. He could admit to himself that maybe his brain was filling in those details on purpose, the way they fabricated the impact he hadn't actually seen. Maybe he just didn't want to believe that his mother could actually fuck the two of them over that many times without someone else being the catalyst from time to time. Maybe. But bruises fade, and he never asked.

"Are you okay, Jimmy?" she asked.

His mom was not a crier. He'd certainly seen her cry—at movies, and TV shows, and, inexplicable to him at the time, when the two of them watched the twin towers coming down on the news only months before—but when it came to living, anyone could say anything to her, do anything, leave her anytime, and she would never cry. Swear, knock things over, but never cry. Jimmy attributed that aspect of himself to her.

It took him some time to open his mouth and respond. "I'm kind of hungry."

She smiled a little, and said, "Well," and her voice wavered. But that was the only time.


	12. Animal (Fall 2009)

_**SPRING, 2009  
**_ _ **Chapter 12**_

 _"I change shapes just to hide in this place but I'm still, I'm still an animal."  
_ Miike Snow, "Animal" - _Miike Snow,_ 2009

* * *

"Hey, Hopkins."

A scraping sound behind him indicated one of the lab room chairs being nudged out of the way. Constantinos Brakus was behind him, holding a portion of preserved cats' lung.

"You weren't supposed to take that out," Jimmy said. His own hands were covered in congealed blood. The whole room smelled faintly of formaldehyde.

"Oh, yeah, I know. It just fell out."

"So what am _I_ supposed to do with it?"

"What? No, ignore the lung. I wanted to ask you..." Constantinos lowered his voice, adopting the covert air of someone discussing a conspiracy within earshot of authority. "Are you actually like...you know, _with_ Trent Northwick?"

Jimmy had been wrist-deep in a vivisected cat all morning and somehow that was preferable to the conversation he was having right then. "Constantinos, I swear to God..."

Constantinos pushed on. "I heard from Angie, because she saw you guys at Napoli's Pizzeria, and I didn't believe he was even back in town until I saw him myself..."

Jimmy looked around, spotted Dr. Slawter aiding another dissection group with his back turned. Jimmy grabbed Constantinos by the sleeve with his gloved hand, staining his sleeve with preservative. Constantinos squeaked.

"I will make you eat this whole cat if you ever talk to me again."

Constantinos yanked his arm away. "God, you are so dramatic!" But he scurried away.

Jimmy turned back to the huge cat on his lab table. Pete stood across from him, rubber-gloved and grinning.

"You _have_ gotten dramatic," Pete noted. "I guess that's what happens when you start fucking an actor, huh?"

"Offer's open to you too, pal."

Pete snorted. "Yeah, have fun carving this bad boy up yourself, then." Pete had done most of the work. The removal of the cats skin had been particularly rough; Jimmy had foisted that particular task entirely on Pete. When Dr. Slawter had come around with what looked like huge bolt cutters to cut the ribs away from the sternum, Jimmy had to look away, flinching with every wet _snap_.

Pete took a numbered pin from a glass tray beside the supine cat, pushed it into the cat's heart. "The organs are pretty easy," he said. "We have to study the muscles more, though. Or at least I do."

"Yeah, same here," Jimmy said absently. He looked down at the cat's thoracic cavity, tried not to imagine what it looked like when it was alive.

Pete scribbled on their lab sheet. "How many people know about you and Trent at this point?"

Jimmy shrugged. "Well, Constantinos, now. And Angie, apparently."

"So, Christy too, then."

"Yup. And Gary, I assume?"

"I might have mentioned it to him," Pete said coolly.

"Awesome," Jimmy said. "I'd say based on those numbers that everyone will know by the end of the month."

"If you guys last that long. You know, considering your track record and all."

Jimmy overshot the pinch of congealed cat blood, and the little bit that didn't hit Pete square in the face landed in Beatrice Trudeau's hair, and he and Pete both had to stay after to clean up the entire lab in repentance. But it was worth it.

* * *

Pete had a point about Jimmy's track record with relationships, but he and Trent had been together for close to five months now, which was already a personal record. It would be five months exactly in a couple weeks, in fact, on March 31st—not that Jimmy was big on anniversaries, or whatever the monthly equivalent was, but it was easy enough to remember that one because the first time he kissed Trent Northwick had been on Halloween, and as many first kisses go, it had been at a party.

It was hosted by Christy Martin at her parents house out in the Vale, and the moment Jimmy showed up in his _Top Gun_ flight suit and spied the cardboard tombstones in her front yard and the huge inflatable spider skulking above her front door, he regretted coming.

He'd spotted Trent among a crowd of younger faces he didn't recognize. He didn't recognize Trent right away either, dressed as some kind of knight, a little taller than he remembered, his hair a little longer, but Trent had seen him as well and when his face lit up a little and he called "Hey, Jimmy-boy!" Jimmy was surprised he'd ever forgotten.

It wasn't hard to get him alone. The last time Jimmy had been at Christy's house, he'd only seen the inside of her room for about twenty minutes before she was shoving him out her window and making him promise to call her, even though they both knew he wouldn't and she didn't really expect him to anyway. As such, he didn't know his way around, and so pushed open the first door he found unlocked. Inside were a few couches, and boxes of things—a storage room, Jimmy figured. He stumbled his way to the couch, and Trent settled beside him.

Jimmy lit a cigarette even though he knew Christy didn't want people smoking in her house.

"I didn't know you had a tattoo," Trent said, referring to the little bluish patch poking up from the wrist of Jimmy's olive flight suit. The little stick n poke tattoo Jimmy had allowed Denny to give him only a month prior, a little Celtic knot, had already begun to fade and bled in an ugly bloom on his wrist. He rolled the sleeve of the suit back.

"Damn," Trent said.

"I know it sucks," Jimmy said.

"How much you pay for that?"

"Nothing," Jimmy said.

Trent laughed. "At least it's fading." His head was bent over Jimmy's arm, blonde hair brushing Jimmy's shoulder. When he looked up and saw Jimmy watching him, he straightened just enough to kiss Jimmy on the lips. He pulled away, gauging Jimmy's reaction. Jimmy looked at him, measuring him up, and then got up, nudged the door to the guest room shut with his foot, put his cigarette out as he passed the table again. He sat beside Trent, smothered the grin from his lips with his own, and began unbuttoning Trent's jeans. He came into Jimmy's hand without much urging. Overcome by a sudden impulse that he immediately tried to play off as a power move, Jimmy licked his fingers.

They spent a lot of time together after that.

* * *

Jimmy didn't have much free time at all those days, and what little he had he spent at Trent's parents' house in the lower middle class part of town. He'd passed the house hundreds of times. Trent's dad was a man even taller than Trent, a stiff but polite man with no hair and what seemed like a complete ignorance to the nature of Jimmy and Trent's relationship. He didn't bother them much at all and so they considerately waited till he was out of the house before they tore at each others clothes, so as not to bother him.

Trent's childhood bedroom was small, maybe the right size for him as a child but certainly too small for him now and nowhere near large enough to contain them both, though they made do. Other peoples' bedrooms, Jimmy found, were one of the most fascinating and raw looking glasses into another persons mind that you could find, and Trent's was just as open as he was. He had movie posters lining his walls, things Jimmy had never heard of— _Le Samourai, the Killing of a Chinese Bookie_ —and a few that he had. Sometimes when they weren't kissing or fucking they watched movies together. Jimmy had never been that interested in watching movies besides as a social event, but he liked the ones Trent showed him, especially the dark ones.

"This movie made me realize I liked dudes," Trent said one night, midway through _Badlands_. Martin Sheen posed onscreen, all blue-eyed and denim-clad. "Movie greasers are so much better than real greasers."

 _Of course he likes greasers,_ Jimmy thought. He wondered how Trent would feel if he told him that the greasers at Bullworth had more or less ceased to exist, just like every other greaser with an ounce of sense had decades earlier. He wondered how Trent would feel if he told him he'd fucked one.

"When did you realize?" Trent asked him, not looking at the screen now. "That you liked guys, I mean."

The answer, of course, was readily available to Jimmy, images of Bullworth's boiler room flickering to the forefront of his mind right away, but he had no clue how Trent would react to it, or how to even begin to tell him.

"Maybe I'll tell you sometime," was all Jimmy could manage.

* * *

"Hey, Jimmy."

He heard the ever-familiar sound of someone approaching him with a request. Leave it to him to make the mistake of thinking he could escape this kind of behavior in the library.

He shut his Biology workbook. "Yeah?"

Angie Ng stood behind him, tugging her braid. "Guess what?"

"I'm not going to guess."

"Jeez, alright," Angie said. She slid into the seat next to him. "What are you working on?"

"Bio. Do you need something, Angie?" Jimmy tried not to sound irritable and failed. There was only so much time you can spend looking over muscle diagrams before you started to go little bit insane.

"Don't be snippy," Angie said, but her mouth hinted a smile. She'd always liked Jimmy. Jimmy liked her pretty well, too. She straightened her skirt. "I just wanted to let you know Christy's throwing another party. In April. And _you,_ "—she punctuated this with a looping motion ending with her finger in Jimmy's shoulder, an innocent enough gesture from anyone else but incredibly flirtatious coming from Angie, "—are invited."

Jimmy just looked at her finger until she withdrew it hastily. "Is my boyfriend invited?" he asked. He regretted using the word immediately, somehow felt it was the wrong word to describe Trent.

"Well, obviously," she said, rolling her eyes a little as though this should have been clear to anyone. "Seeing as you guys met at Christy's last party. She thinks she's like a matchmaker now."

"Oh, really?"

"Yeah," Angie said. She laughed. "You guys are like her trophy couple."

"Good to hear," Jimmy said, although he wasn't entirely sure if he thought it was good. He'd decided that attention was the last thing he needed now that he was a senior and being a trophy anything was certainly attention.

He thought she would go away then, but she lingered, watching him study. She poked at his study sheet. "You spelled _'sartorius'_ wrong."

"Do you still need something?"

"Are you going?"

"What?"

"You didn't say if you were going or not."

"Oh. Uh." He thought about it. He figured a party couldn't hurt him. "Sure."

"Great," she said. "That's all I needed to hear." As she sauntered away Jimmy felt that familiar feeling that he was plunging himself headlong into a bad situation and when something went terribly wrong, as things tended to go for him, he'd have only himself to blame. But he dispelled the thought. After all, the party wasn't for weeks. And again—how much could a party possibly hurt him?

* * *

Just under three weeks—twenty days, if he was aiming to be pedantic—passed between the day Jimmy was invited to the party and the party itself, and in those twenty days Jimmy experienced four arrivals. The first was the easiest.

Miss Danvers pushed the solid off-white envelope across the main office front counter to him. He saw her brow furrow when she saw the University of New Hampshire seal, but she said nothing as she handed it off to him. As he left the office, he heard her say, "Good luck," under her breath.

He slid his finger beneath the seal almost mechanically. He'd applied to a handful of schools and the last three envelopes, all delivered with the same air of haughty skepticism, all heavy with the same nervous anxiety, had all contained polite but irrefutable rejections. One of them had been kind enough to enumerate what he already suspected—that his long record of misconduct and frequent suspensions didn't fit with their "academic message", regardless of his academic achievement. By now the butcher-paper list in the front office, labeled PROSPECTIVE SENIORS, was regularly growing longer, and every so often he would hear someone whoop from the common room in the dorms, followed by cheers, a sound that settled into him a subtle envy.

He flipped the envelope open. A New Hampshire Wildcats pennant slipped out, and he felt his heart leap into his throat. He stopped dead in his tracks on the middle of the foyer stairs.

 _Congratulations! It is my pleasure to accept you to the University of New Hampshire..._

He held the blue foam pennant in his hands. _Well, damn, Jimmy,_ was all he could think, and then _I have to tell Pete,_ and then _I have to call my mom._ Stunned, he remained in the stairway until Ms. Philips passed him and asked him if he was alright.

"Yeah, I'm fine, Ms. Philips," he said. "Actually, I'm great." And then he ran back up the stairs toward the main office, to add his name to the list.

He was working behind the order counter at Napoli's when the second arrival came. He didn't like working at the register, preferred the more physical and less restrictive work of taking out the deliveries, but ever since the party incident Hector had him working the counter more and more, and Jimmy couldn't really say he blamed him.

It was just after 11:00 AM on a Sunday, only minutes after they officially opened for the day. Like any pizza joint before noon on a Sunday, it was dead quiet, and Jimmy was in a mood to match, having been up all night the night before cramming the assigned reading that he'd once again forgotten to do. Nothing but a tremendous amount of willpower and half a travel mug of black coffee was keeping him from falling asleep at the order counter outright.

Chin on the heel of his hand, eyes flickering shut, he almost missed the bell over the front door jingling.

"Jimmy?"

He nearly didn't recognize her voice, not right away at least. He looked up, blinked a few times to clear the sleep from his eyes, then rocketed upright so quickly he nearly passed out.

"Holy shit," he said.

She looked different. She still had bangs but the rest of her hair was longer, though just as red as ever. The hood of her rain jacket was flipped up. Her eyebrow was pierced. And she was smiling. At him.

"Well...?" Zoe asked.

"Huh?" Jimmy said, and Zoe laughed.

"Aren't you gonna take my order?" she asked.

"Oh," he said. "Right."

* * *

She was in town to visit her parents, Zoe told him at the wooden window seating area during his break.

"My mom freaked out and cried," she said, smiling a little. "We've already argued like three times since I got back last night, isn't that typical?"

"I guess so," Jimmy said. He tried to remember things Zoe had told him about her mother, who he'd met once.

"It's good though," Zoe said. "It's normal." She ran a finger along the rough unfinished grain of the window booth. "She was so pissed when all that stuff happened. She gave me the cold shoulder. I thought she'd never talk to me again. She couldn't even _look_ at me." She looked at Jimmy. "Has your mom ever done that to you?"

Jimmy picked through the memories of the innumerable arguments he'd had with his mother and couldn't think of a single instance, and told Zoe so.

"Jeez, you're lucky," she said. "All I ever want is for her to shut up, and yet somehow it's the worst thing ever when she won't speak to me."

A memory swam to the front of Jimmy's mind, of him laying in the backseat of his step-dad's car. _Jimmy, please say something_. That had been his first day at Bullworth. It seemed so far away now, even though he could remember the heat of the leather seats and the sun streaming through the window as clearly as if it'd happened that morning. It wasn't the first time he'd elected to give her the silent treatment.

"Sounds terrible," he said flatly.

The conversation lulled. He'd wanted to see her for so long, had thought about how their reunion might go if it ever took place, and now that they were together he didn't know what to say, and his break, according to his watch, was ticking to a close.

He opened his mouth to say something just as Zoe said, "Do you remember that poem I gave you?"

"I still have it," he answered immediately.

Her brows raised a little, her silvery piercing catching the light, but he couldn't read her expression much aside from that. "Wow," she said.

"Is that weird?"

"Oh, no!" she said quickly, shaking her head. "No, I just...I thought about it today, right as I was coming in. You know that line..." she trailed off, eyes drawing upward to some mental database. "'But there are moments, walking, when I catch a glimpse of myself in the window glass...' and I don't really remember the rest, but it's the part where she says she's like, fucking _seized_ by an appreciation just for the fact that she's alive. You remember?"

"I do."

"Well, when I was walking up here, I had a moment kind of like that, when I saw myself in a car window. I mean, I guess it wasn't _my_ moment, since I immediately thought of the poem. But like, I still kind of felt something, you know? And how crazy is it that I'd think of _that_ poem, of all the poems I've read, and then run into _you_ just minutes later?"

Jimmy didn't know exactly what she meant by a "moment", but he could see an opportunity arising, though for what exactly, he wasn't sure. "Maybe it's a sign," he said.

"Of what?"

Jimmy didn't know himself, and he just looked down at her hands on the table. She wore no rings, though he could see a faintly pale strip on a few of her fingers where rings usually were. Her nails were painted a soft green color where they'd always been painted black. Disassociated from her, he would never have guessed they were her hands.

"I don't know," he admitted. "I guess...I mean..." he was at a loss for what to say. This was another one of those "no winners or losers" situations that he couldn't quite grasp. "I've kept your poem in my wallet since I found it," he said finally, hoping she would understand.

Her eyebrows raised again and her lips parted, formed a few words before settling for, "Oh."

Cars passed outside, deafening in the silence that followed. Zoe sighed. "Jimmy..."

The tone with which she said his name may as well have been the whine of a plummeting bombshell.

"I'm seeing someone," she said.

"I am, too," he said quickly. He had completely forgotten about Trent until that moment, as his brain groped for a defense.

"Really?" Zoe said.

"Yeah. He's great," he said. Zoe's mouth dropped open a little and her eyes widened, and he quickly remembered that there were some things he'd never told her.

"Wait, what?"

"Uh...yup. Surprise."

"Damn," she said, and then, "It's always the ones you don't expect, huh?" she said, laughing a little.

"Don't I know it." He wanted to ask about her boyfriend, questions that he knew he could never ask, _how tall is he?_ and _does he kiss better than me_? and all other manner of things he knew were inappropriate to say out loud. She seemed to read some kind of turmoil in his expression.

"He's why I stopped writing," she said. She looked sorry, or maybe, Jimmy thought, he was only hoping she did.

"You've been together for a while then, huh?"

She nodded. "Almost two years."

Two years. He suddenly felt like a blip on her timeline. _I_ am _a blip on her timeline._

"That's good. That's stable," he said. _When did "stable" turn into a compliment?_

"It is good," she said. It was her turn to look conflicted. She pulled her hands back a little, flattened them back out, and then withdrew them for a second time, this time to withdraw a piece of paper from her pocket.

"Another poem?" Jimmy asked. He'd meant it as a joke and it came out sounding like an accusation. Zoe tried not to look hurt, but he could see it.

"No," she said flatly. "It's...I really wanted, if I saw you at all while I was here, I wanted to apologize." She turned the little folded wedge of paper in her hands. "For what I did to you two summers ago. Because I'm sorry. I really, really am. You don't deserve that. You did a lot for me." She pushed the paper across the table at him. He took it; it was warm from being in her pocket for so long.

"Don't read it here. Read it later. When you're alone."

"Okay," he said, and tucked it into his pocket. He looked at his watch and found that his break had ended three minutes ago.

"I guess I should get back," he said. He hoped she would have more to say.

"Yeah, don't let me keep you," she said. He felt relief and disappointment at once.

He wanted to hug her, as just one final, proper goodbye, but Hector was waving him toward the counter and he knew he couldn't.

The bell over the entrance jingled cheerful as she propped it open. "See you," she called over her shoulder.

 _See you,_ he thought, but what he said was, "Goodbye."

* * *

He read the letter in his room very late that night, at his desk, surrounded by his math homework. He told himself, _one more problem, then the letter_ , until he could no longer stand putting it off anymore. He unfolded it, spread it open in the circle of lamp light.

 _Dear Jimmy_

 _This is the sixth draft of this letter, for real, and I'm kind of fed up with my inability to properly express myself, so I'm just going to come right out and say everything._

 _Me and the other guy (I've decided I won't use his name, it seems more respectful) weren't fucking. I know how people at that fucking school can be. I'm sure they said all kinds of shit when they heard I was getting sent away. But he and I weren't fucking. Or making out, or planning to run away together, or any other cliche bullshit. I got too close to him, though. I told him stuff about myself that I was afraid to tell you because I liked you and I didn't want you to not like me. Stuff that seems like not a big deal now. He made me feel good about myself. It's embarrassing writing this down because it's so obvious to me now that he was manipulating me._

 _He was older. I'm sure that part found its way into the rumors, and it's true. I should've known because that wasn't the first time that kind of thing has happened to me, as you're well aware. But I thought I could trust him because he didn't try to set me up with him or anything, and seemed like he was just being friendly most of the time, and plus he set me up with weed which is how I met him in the first place, so I wanted him to be cool._

 _This is the part I keep having to re-write because I keep crossing shit out and I refuse to type it for some reason. I don't want to sound too dramatic so I guess I'll just say it._

 _One day he didn't have the weed I'd brought the money for and said it was somewhere else, and I would have to go with him. Big Idiot Me decided that was fine and so I did go with him. He drove me out to the woods and asked me to blow him. I know that doesn't sound like a massive deal or anything but he was acting weird and we were in the middle of the woods and I didn't know what he would do if I said no. And I DID want to say no. I swear I did. I kept thinking of you. But as much as it pisses me off to admit it, I was kind of scared. He suddenly seemed way older than he was. Or I guess he seemed his actual age to me. It was like the whole situation just became facts for a moment and I was like fuck I'm in a car with an adult and he wants me to blow him and I have nowhere to go if I say no. And so I did it. And then he started the car again and we got back on the road and we drove for a bit, and at a stoplight he asked if I still wanted weed, and then I opened the door and ran away and threw up in the woods. And then I ran for a while until I didn't know where I was, and I found a payphone and my mom had to come get me, and that's when she freaked out and I guess you know the rest, more or less. I wanted to tell you that whole day we spent together but I was so ashamed. I didn't want you to hate me or think I was gross or whatever. I feel bad even telling you now._

 _I know you won't hate me. I know you aren't like that. And I don't want you to worry. I did some therapy, which I didn't even think I needed but it helped a lot. And my boyfriend. I guess I won't use his name either._

 _I don't know what else to say. I don't know how people end letters besides like "yours truly" or "stay gold, Ponyboy" or whatever. I just hope you forgive me for what I did, and that it didn't hurt you too badly, and that you're still helping people out and staying a little mean because that's how people like us get by on this bitch of an earth._

 _yours truly_

 _zoe_

He only read it once, and then folded it back up, went over to his wardrobe, and stuck it in the same tobacco box he kept her picture in. After that, he didn't bother cleaning up his things or changing, just flicked off the lamp and climbed into bed, and listened to the murmur of the television in the common area, just barely audible from his room, and the sound of people walking around in the floors above and below him until he fell asleep.

* * *

His mother was the third arrival, and even though he should have expected it after he called her about his acceptance letter her presence in the little waiting area in the front office still sent him reeling.

"Jimmy," she said, in the same flat tone she used to address cashiers.

"Holy shit," he said, pretty much his go-to response these days. Miss Danvers side-eyed him from the front desk, but said nothing.

His mother stood, straightened the fur abomination she was wearing.

"Where's stepfuck?"

"Excuse me?"

"I said, where's Graham?"

"Staying in town," she said curtly, a familiar hard expression settling into her features. Her hair looked longer, Jimmy thought. "I figured bringing him along wasn't the best idea."

"You figured right," Jimmy said, derision coloring his words automatically. _Idiot,_ he thought. _Just make it easy for once_.

"Jimmy..." his mother said, her tone warning.

"I know," he said quickly. "Sorry. Really."

"I was just going to invite you to dinner."

Standing in front of her properly, he realized the last time he'd spoken to her he'd been far shorter than her. Now he was nearly eye-level with her.

"That's...I mean...sure," he finally said.

The ride into town was awkward, as rides with his mother those days often were, though even he could admit that Graham's car was pretty nice. He thought, _he lets you drive his car?,_ but decided against saying it out loud.

At the Happy Diner, his mother asked him all the questions he was expecting as they waited for their food, looking only politely interested the whole time, and he answered them with the same polite detachment.

"UNH is a perfectly respectable school," she said. "I almost went there when I was your age."

"Cool," Jimmy said, looking down at his burger.

His mother speared a piece of lettuce with her fork. "Your stepfather is proud of you, too," she said, in a tone that made it clear she was testing the waters.

"That's nice," Jimmy said, as politely as he could manage.

This seemed to satisfy her. "He'll be happy to help you with tuition."

Jimmy thought about how much money Graham had already sunk into his tuition at Bullworth.

"I dunno," he said. A thought occurred to him, and he tried to say it as though he'd been thinking it over and not as though it had only just popped into his mind. "Maybe I'll go to a community college first."

She stared. "What for?"

"Seems like a good idea. I don't even know what I want to major in."

"Community colleges are..." She waved her fork. " _Low class._ "

"I'm low class," he answered evenly, and she opened her mouth to say something but he gave her his best _I don't want to talk about this anymore_ look and, to his great relief, she changed the subject.

"Your hair is getting longer."

His hand went to his head absentmindedly. He'd kept meaning to shave his head again but he'd gotten used to the longer style, which was nearly long enough to part now. "Yeah, it is."

"It hides that awful scar."

"I like my scar," he said. What he almost said was, _you gave it to me_ , and somehow that must have translated through the look he gave her. She set her fork down and dabbed at her mouth with her napkin. She set the napkin down. She looked solemn then, a way he wasn't used to seeing her.

"I know you won't believe me when I say this, but I just want you to do what's best for yourself." She said this mildly, and without looking at him, the way Jimmy thought she might look if she were confessing some terrible crime.

 _You're right, I don't believe it._ He didn't look up from his burger, realized he didn't really want it and couldn't figure out why he'd bothered ordering it at all.

"Jimmy," she said. He could feel her eyes on him. He continued to say nothing. He felt a string of insults springing up from inside him, some knee-jerk reaction that he hadn't quite tamed and possibly never would. He dug his fingers into the vinyl-topped bench until he could feel the hard foam beneath. _Why are you so angry, Hopkins?_

The clattering of his mother's fork being set down made him jump. "Jimmy, _don't_ do this to me right now. Say something." Someone who didn't know her wouldn't have known she was getting angry, but it was building up just behind her public facade. She waited, not long enough for him to say anything. " _Say something_ ," she said again. In his head, Zoe's voice said s _omehow it's the worst thing ever when she won't speak to me._

Jimmy was starting to realize that his only two options were to speak and hurt someone, or keep his mouth shut and hurt them anyway, and he grasped for the middle ground. "Like what?" he finally said, sounding so tired that he even surprised himself.

"You could thank me for caring, for one," she said, settling back into her salad as though getting a word out of him was her only goal and it had been easily done. If she noticed how tired he sounded, it didn't show on her face. "You'll be eighteen soon and I could just throw you out and have you make it on your own."

"Maybe I'd prefer that," Jimmy said.

"I thought I'd prefer it when I was eighteen, too," she said. At this his ears perked up—his mother was the storytelling type but she told the same few over and over again. All accounted for, there was maybe a weeks worth of time in her pre-Jimmy past that she was willing to let him know about. She didn't talk much about what she was like at his age. But she didn't say much more than that, just continued to eat her salad, her lipstick smearing against a piece of arugula.

He looked out the window beside their booth and watched the evening light fade so that he would not have to look at his mother anymore.


	13. When I Grow Up

_**SPRING**_ _ **, 20**_ _ **09 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 13**_

 _"I've never liked that sad look from someone who wants to be loved by you."  
_ Fever Ray, "When I Grow Up" - _Fever Ray,_ 2009

* * *

The morning of Christy's party dawned so wet and rainy and uncharacteristically cold that Jimmy thought it might erase every trace of spring from Bullworth's grounds and plunge them back into winter. As he lay in bed, awake before his alarm and listening to the rumble of what could either be Mr. Luntz rolling bins past outside or the distant threat of thunder, he felt a sinking feeling in his gut that seemed independent of the weather and he failed in his singular way to take it as an omen. He wanted nothing more than to stay in bed, but he hauled himself upright, his only preparation being a heavier jacket than usual.

As miserable as Bullworth looked when it was being battered by rain, it also drove a sort of peace into the campus that seemed to reach to its core—no one felt like loitering or fighting when the rain was coming down hard enough to sting an upturned face, hard enough to chill anyone who dared get caught out in it. Afterward there would be muddy fights and people would slide down the slick grass slopes bordering the campus, and someone's schoolwork would end up in the puddles collecting around the school, but during the downpour everyone kept their heads down and ran to their destinations while the rain rolled steady and oppressive all day.

Swiping water from his raincoat in the English room, Jimmy caught Christy looking at him from across the room. She raised her red eyebrows high, wiggled them in the covert way that made it clear to anyone observing that she was up to no good. He went to her.

"You still on for tonight?"

"Sure," he said, unnerved by his own lack of resolve.

"' _Sure'_ doesn't cut it, Jimmy," she said. "I want you there. And that tall jerkoff you've been running around with."

Nothing she'd said about Trent was inaccurate, so whether she'd meant it as a jab or not, he simply ignored it. "I'll be there."

* * *

Somehow the weather only got worse as the day wore on. Thunder, now unmistakable, rumbled outside, and lightning flashed in the distance. Jimmy found rain alternatively invigorating and debilitating, and that day it wore on him, so much so that he skipped his last few classes of the day and went right to his room, tried to do some, any of his homework, and couldn't.

He tried laying in bed, his damp jeans soaking into the sheets, but he couldn't sleep like that, could only lay in bed with his eyes closed for a while before getting up again. He knew that classes had let out for the day when Pete rapped on his door frame, stuck his head in from the hall.

"Big shindig today," he said brightly, and then, "Wow, you look like shit."

"Do I?" Jimmy asked.

"Yeah, are you sick? Stay away if you are," Pete said.

"Fine," Jimmy said. "Just tired." It wasn't untrue but Jimmy knew there was more to it than that, knew that his mother's visit, and Zoe's letter, were getting to him, and he was letting it happen. He wanted to tell Pete but couldn't find the time, or the words for it. Even then, when it was just the two of them, Jimmy felt like it was somehow the wrong time to bring it up, like there was some invisible barrier keeping him from venting and soon, somehow, he'd find the right conditions to break it down.

Pete cocked his head a little, like a dog might, and looked right at Jimmy, and then he came inside the room and nudged the door shut behind him.

"Sit down, Jimmy," Pete said.

"Uh," was all Jimmy could think to say.

Pete sat at the edge of Jimmy's bed. He gestured toward the desk and the chair before it. "Go on."

Jimmy sat.

"You're acting really weird, Jimmy. You know you have a "thinking" face?"

This was news to Jimmy. "Oh. I do?"

"Yeah. And it's been your permanent expression for like a week." Pete leaned forward, propping himself up with his hands clasped on his knees. " _I'm_ the overthinker. So tell Dr. Pete."

"There's really nothing to say," Jimmy said.

"Jimmy," Pete said.

"I'm serious. I'm fine. Like I said, I'm _tired_. And…stressed. About finals. And my, uh…future."

"Jimmy," Pete said again.

"And I just…the rain, you know…" Jimmy continued, faltering, and Pete said nothing, just training some variant of his _I-told-you_ face on Jimmy, and just like that the barrier came crashing down.

So Jimmy told him everything.

* * *

The drive to Christy's house felt unnaturally freeing after that. Strictly speaking they could have walked, but neither of them were willing to trudge up the hill to Christy's house in the downpour, so after sprinting to Pete's, they dried off and piled into the jeep.

They picked up Trent first, who sheepishly crawled into the backseat. He had to duck his head to keep from hitting the roof when they went over speed bumps. Trent and Pete didn't really get along and usually this sort of thing would have peeved Jimmy. If it were anyone else, Jimmy would have reached a hand into the backseat, felt for Trent's hand, and squeezed, to let him know within the limits of his nonverbal lexicon that it was fine. But it was only Trent, so he said nothing, merely watched the downpour in silence.

Christy's house wasn't nearly as heavily decorated as it had been the night of her first party. No streamers hung outside and there were no tombstones in the front yard, nothing to signify that any kind of celebration was going on at all. A party like this wasn't really a celebration though, Jimmy thought. The night had progressed steadily and darkness had fallen over town, and still the rain had not let up—slowed and lessened from time to time, but never let up.

Even without obvious signs of celebration, it was obvious from the sound of voices and music coming from inside that the party was in full swing.

"Aren't we early?" Trent asked, tugging down the hem of his raincoat.

Jimmy thought they were, too. She'd said nine hadn't she? Eight? "I guess not," he said.

Later someone would explain to him, in the morning, or maybe later, at Pete's house—maybe it _was_ Pete who said it, who was told by someone else—how the parties had been mixed, Christy Martin's and Wade Martin's (who were siblings, Jimmy would also learn right then), and during that whole four-day stretch that their parents weren't home, they had mistakenly chosen the same day to throw their respective parties, and as a result far too many people were now crammed into the Martin household.

The rumble of music bloomed into full relief as they opened the door, like a facade giving way. Inside, the carpet was tamped down for a few feet past the entrance by the rain tracked in. There was music playing, something Jimmy vaguely recognized, and in that half-cocked way that suggested it could only get louder, and would as the night wore on.

"Holy shit," Trent said, registering as muffled and thin in Jimmy's ear.

"Yeah," he agreed. He scanned the crowd and found he didn't recognize a single face there, not only because Bullworth itself was rapidly being overcome by a student body that was completely alien to Jimmy, but also because, he slowly realized as he moved deeper into the house with Pete and Trent in tow, that there was no way the entire Bullworth area contained that many teenagers. Someone had brought in people from out of town.

The three of them found a couch, somehow empty of people, to retreat to with their first drinks of the night. "Is that Damon?" Pete shouted. The music had gotten louder as the party engulfed them.

"Who?" Jimmy shouted.

"Damon!" Pete repeated. "Big Damon! Jock Damon!"

"Oh shit, is it?" Jimmy asked. He looked over the sea of heads. It was nearly impossible to see among the strobing lights, but he thought he _did_ see Damon, and a head of blonde hair next to him that could have belonged to Casey Harris. They had graduated a year ago. He couldn't imagine Christy would have invited either of them.

Trent looked stricken. "Do you see..."

"Who?" Jimmy asked. Any other time he might have worked this one out on his own, but his drink had already worn down his reasoning ability and he couldn't figure out what Trent was looking for among the faces. "What's your problem?"

Trent just looked at him for a moment, then shook his head. "Nothing," he said, sipping his own beer. Only moments later his eyes lit up at something in a different direction, just above Jimmy'd head.

"Aayyy!" he called, the general affirmation of recognition answered swiftly. Someone tall and brunette emerged from the sea of people and stumbled their way, colliding with Trent in a mess of hugging arms. It took Jimmy a minute to recognize him.

"Hey, Tom," he called.

"Hopkins!" Tom's enthusiasm fell his way, and soon Jimmy was caught in a hug as well. "Holy shit, you got tall! Well," he said, pulling back and sizing him up. "Less short, anyway."

"Your eye got better," Jimmy noted.

"Still can't hardly see out of it," Tom said, promptly demonstrating this by accident as he nearly toppled a keg. "Trent, buddy, you gotta see the guys, they don't know you're back in town..."

Trent looked at Jimmy, and Jimmy shrugged. As Trent was pulled away through the crowd, Pete looked instantly relieved, a sentiment Jimmy privately shared.

Aside from that minor comfort, Pete looked nervous. Jimmy nudged him.

"Relax," he said.

"Can't," Pete answered immediately. "Fuck, you didn't tell me there'd be _so_ many people!"

"I didn't know! There wasn't last time. I think something's up, we should find Christy and ask. But first," he said, feeling some of that heavy tension dissolving as the thudding music and lights and alcohol did their work, "we gotta find you another drink."

Christy proved more difficult to find than he'd expected. He pushed into several rooms, none of which were familiar but most of which contained people making out or passed out, plus one fairly surreptitious exchange that Jimmy thought might have been a drug deal. Finding Pete a drink, however, proved far easier, and soon the two of them were well into creating the next morning's hangover.

"What's that?" Jimmy asked. They'd found the kitchen, possibly the only room in the house Jimmy properly knew the location of, and it was thankfully relatively quiet. Jimmy was getting hoarse from shouting over the music. "Your second?"

"Yeah, second still," Pete said. He was still relatively alert, no doubt helped by the fact that he was a little bigger than Jimmy by then. "I'm trying to keep my wits about me."

"What for?" Jimmy asked. He felt good. _Why was I so freaked out this morning?_ The rolling rain over campus that morning, and campus itself, seemed incredibly far away.

"Dunno," Pete said. "I think I caught your paranoia bug or something. Keep feeling like something bad's gonna happen."

"It's just 'cause you saw jocks and bullies and your fight-or-flight went off, man." Jimmy believed this, too, thought it was a reasonable enough response, even if they were on positive enough terms with Damon and Casey and Tom. "They won't bug us, man. Don't make me peer pressure you, dude," Jimmy said. "I'm not above that. You know I'm not."

Pete rolled his eyes but he dutifully took a sip, wincing a little. "Fuck, that tastes so bad," he said.

"The more you drink, the better it—"

"Yeah, yeah," Pete said dismissively. He was watching the door as though at any moment someone six-foot plus and itching for a fight would come crashing through it. It did open then, as if on cue, but Christy poked her head through, hair looking jarringly red in the fluorescent kitchen light, followed by Angie, her glasses glinting in the light.

"Jimmy, there you are!" She motioned for him, and when he didn't respond right away she charged at him, took his forearm in her hand, and led him physically to the door.

"Petey, come too," Angie said.

"Wait, wait, what's up?" Pete asked, following so fast that his drink sloshed.

Angie turned toward him, looked at Jimmy. "It's...there's..." she shook her head. "Just come see. You'd really better just come see."

Pete obliged, following the two of them with Jimmy through the body-cramped hallway. There was a very brief moments reprieve, the cross-fade not quite covering the gap between songs before the horns in "Let Me Clear My Throat" began, and in the resulting pitch of excited screams, Jimmy nearly lost sight of Christy before they could make it to the front door, which was still shut, the front yard off-limits to party goers if only to maintain some facade of normalcy, however thin, facing out to the street. Christy cracked the door and allowed Jimmy and Pete to stumble through, and leaning against Christy's garden wall was the fourth and final unexpected arrival that spring, looking sallow yet impeccable in a windbreaker and jeans.

"Morons," Gary greeted them mildly.

"Gary," Pete said breathlessly, sounding as though he'd just run a mile. Jimmy felt suddenly, terribly sober.

* * *

The flickering lights in the kitchen had seemed harsh before, but given Gary's features to light against they were even more cutting, shadowing his hollow cheeks, his scarred brow. Jimmy thought he looked a little better since he'd last seen him, though it was Pete who voiced it.

"Yeah, I feel better," Gary said. "Though that was necessity more than anything. There's only so much of my therapist I can stand, and if I didn't put on more weight I'd have to get _extra sessions_."

"Sharon doesn't sound _that_ bad," Pete said. _Who is Sharon?_ Jimmy wondered. _His therapist? Am I supposed to know who Sharon is?_ He wondered if he'd ever been clued in on this part of Gary's life before, or if he had just become the third wheel in a discussion he'd never been a part of in the first place.

"She's pretty bad," Gary said. He was studying Jimmy now. "You look particularly rough today, James."

"You sound lively enough for the both of us," Jimmy said, not intending it as a compliment, though it came out as one. How he'd expected it to sound like anything else in the first place, he wasn't really sure.

"How did you know we were here?" Pete asked, sipping his drink.

"Your mom said."

Pete nearly choked. " _My mom knows I'm here?"_

"Uh, yeah, I guess so?" Gary said. "She and your dad didn't seem angry or anything. They probably like having you out of their hair," he added, with a wicked grin. This news seemed to have a numbing effect on Pete, which got another laugh out of Gary, lips curling behind the lip of his bottle. _Are you allowed to be drinking?_ Jimmy wanted to know, but his tongue felt heavy and he didn't want to exert more effort than he strictly needed right then.

The door to the kitchen cracked open again, and Angie stuck her head through.

"Jimmy, Wade's asking for your boyfriend, have you seen him?"

"Not since I got here," Jimmy said, just as Gary perked up and asked, "Boyfriend?"

"Settle down," Jimmy said

"Come help me look for him?" Angie suggested.

"No, I want details," Gary said.

Angie took Jimmy by the arm and led him away. Jimmy blurted, "Don't tell him anything, Pete." As the door to the kitchen swung shut, Jimmy thought he heard Pete say, _no promises._

Back in the miasma, Jimmy kept his eyes out for Trent, scanned the tops of the crowd for blonde hair, and came up short in every direction he looked. He came upon Damon and Casey, who, by the looks and their eyes and the force of their friendliness, were both out of their minds.

"Have you guys seen Trent?"

"Who?" Casey asked.

"Trent. Tall, blonde?"

"That one?" Damon said. "Yeah, he asked for Kirby and then fucked off when I said he wasn't here, I dunno where he went."

 _Kirby_. That jostled some warning bell in Jimmy's mind, too distant and small to be fully comprehended right away. Angie shouted something to Casey, who had to move closer to hear, and Jimmy took the opportunity to slip away. He didn't really care where Trent was right then, only where Trent would be at the end of the night, if he found himself wanting to end the night in that way, and he had a feeling Trent felt the same way about him.

He made his way back toward the kitchen, shouldered the door open and found it fuller than before, and Gary and Pete not among its inhabitants. He asked the room if they'd seen Gary and Pete, fumbling through their descriptions.

"A scar?" a boy asked, an underclassman. "Isn't that like...Psycho Gary?"

"Gary the Ghost?" a girl asked. "I thought he haunted the bell tower."

"No, it's a werewolf that lives in the bell tower."

Jimmy gaped, dumbfounded. "Gary's real," was all he could think to say.

"Uh, no, he's a myth," another boy said knowingly. A couple other kids nodded sagely.

Jimmy eased the door shut and decided to look elsewhere. The party had hit that zenith that parties sometimes had where the music and shouting and pulsing had coalesced into some great beast, thudding and tearing at the carpet and tiles. Jimmy was starting to feel sick, found himself waiting against walls, waiting for threats of nausea to pass.

He tried a couple rooms, a bathroom, in his search for Gary and Pete. He decided he wanted to go home, or to Pete's. He'd grab Pete, and he supposed he could take Gary as well, and they could leave, and if Trent caught them as they left then so be it. But in the labyrinthine way of big and unfamiliar houses, Jimmy could have sworn Christy's was getting larger somehow, hallways and empty, purposeless rooms snaking further inward and away from the escape.

Jimmy climbed the stairs to the second floor, which was only a little quieter but a lot more empty. Tried another door, found it locked. Tried another. The third clicked open and inward. He groped for the light.

The light flickered on and fell over Christy's bedroom, neat and familiar. On Christy's couch were Pete and Gary. Pete hands were clasped on either side of Gary's face. Gary's hands were low on Pete's abdomen, twisted in his shirt. Their lips were pressed together.

The instant the light snapped on, they leaped apart. Pete's eyes were wide, going wider when he saw who'd caught him.

"Fuck," he said.

Gary looked too calm. He leaned back against the couch, his eyes trained on Pete.

" _'Fuck'_ is right," Jimmy said. For the second time that night, he felt instantly sobered.

"Shit," Pete said. "I don't know what...Jimmy, it..." Pete buried his face in his hands, made a strangled sound of shame and disbelief, and stormed past Jimmy and out of the room. Then Jimmy was alone with Gary, who looked merely amused.

"What's his deal?" Gary asked.

In seconds Jimmy was on him, grabbing him easily and rolling them both back onto the floor. He twisted them, pushed Gary down and between his knees. Gary gasped when he hit the ground, and grabbed Jimmy's wrists, attempting to break his hold, but his grip was even weaker than Jimmy remembered and he didn't stand a chance.

"Jim, relax," Gary wheezed.

"You're a real cunt for coming here," Jimmy said, so quietly his voice almost blended into the thrum of the music from downstairs.

" _What?_ "

"Don't _'what'_ me, don't play dumb!" Jimmy shook him, harder than he meant to, and the lightness of Gary's body, present but fragile, scared him into letting up a little, and some shoving on Gary's part soon had him off of Gary all together. Gary hauled himself to his feet, brushing himself off.

"Fuck's sake, you psycho," Gary muttered.

"I'm not the psycho here," Jimmy said from the floor. He was breathing heavily. "Do I even need to ask what just happened?"

"Maybe you _should_ ask, instead of tackling first and asking later." Gary sat himself back onto the couch, leaned back casually. He swept an arm at the carpet. "Look at that. You fucked Christy's nice rug." He picked his beer off the floor, swished it.

"Please don't do this to him," Jimmy said, hating the way it came out as a plea.

Gary simply sipped his beer, but even drunk Jimmy knew he'd caught him off guard. He swallowed.

Jimmy climbed onto the other end of the couch, two cushions away. His breathing was returning to normal. He'd already shut down some of Gary's defense with his unexpected display of vulnerability, and he struck again. "Wasn't once enough? Did you even like it?"

Gary just sat in silence, absentmindedly swirling his drink. Then, with a resigned shake of his head: "Not really," and Jimmy could tell he was telling the truth, or at least a close approximation of it.

"Did you think you would?"

He answered faster this time. "No."

"Then _why_?"

This was the longest pause yet, and though Jimmy's heart was beating like a racing horse he let it play out, let it stretch to its unbearable conclusion. Gary said, "Because he _wanted me,_ Jimmy _._ " Gary's face broke into a wide grin, mocking and grim, like a spider might smile if it had the teeth for it. That _smile_ , and the memory of smiles like it, and the booze, all lit something in Jimmy like a row of candles coming alight, and he felt some hatred for Gary that he'd spent two full years trying to extinguish simultaneously snap forward and shrink down, a hot whip of pure loathing—loathing for his manipulating Pete, loathing that he'd showed up at all, loathing for all the old scars he felt reopening every time he looked at Gary, and loathing that Gary had finally and irresolutely, somehow, shattered Jimmy's defenses. For just a moment, fueled by that venom, and exhaustion, and the booze, Jimmy felt that he and Gary were the same, two sides of the same, hideous coin. He'd been wrong about the turning point. He knew now that it was Gary, all along, who was the before and after. The feverish anger faded quickly, the loathing slithering away almost completely, and Gary never knew the difference.

* * *

He would be asked to discuss turning points a few times in his life. He'd choose his first day at Bullworth, or the day he pushed Gary from the bell tower, or the day he met or left any number of lovers, or any other arbitrary thing in between. Seldom would he have the strength to place it there, at Christy Martin's house, in the middle of April his senior year of high school, as the sun rose very early the next morning, and Christy and Angie ordered everyone who could still stand to find or call their designated drivers and leave. Jimmy lay on one of Christy's couches, at some point having migrated back downstairs, his arm pinned beneath him as he lay on his side. Someone had laid him that way as a precaution, to keep him from choking on his own vomit, but he hadn't had any more beers that night, wasn't drunk enough to vomit, wasn't too terribly drunk at all. In that early morning light, as Angie and Christy left to find garbage bags, there was movement across the momentary silence, and Jimmy saw Gary, stumbling toward the door. He slipped a little at the door, silhouetted against the approaching sunrise. He caught himself on the doorway—at some point during the night, he must have decided he'd get properly drunk and had proceeded to do so, with the kind of gusto only Gary could muster. Jimmy heard the jingle of keys, saw Pete's lanyard hanging from Gary's fist, clearly as he could see the cracks in the leather couch beneath him. Jimmy opened his mouth, shut it again, and he let Gary leave, watching him step through the doorway and into the dawn, saying nothing all the while.


	14. The Jeweler's Hands

_**SPRING**_ _ **, 20**_ _ **09 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 14**_

 _"Watching his exit was like falling off the ferry in the night..."  
_ Arctic Monkeys, "The Jeweler's Hands" - _Humbug,_ 2009

* * *

Jimmy woke before his alarm, with a steadily growing pain pulsing at his temples and his mouth dry, and it took him a moment to remember that he was in Pete's room, in Pete's bed, the weight of the covers unfamiliar. It was early—the digital clock on Pete's bedside table said 8:14. Jimmy laid still, listening to the sound of early traffic outside, still half-asleep. The clock flipped to 8:15 just as the land line out in the kitchen rang, and in his early morning stupor Jimmy conflated the two and wondered why anyone would set an alarm for 8:15 in the morning. It took him a moment, and the sound of the phone being answered in the kitchen, for him to realize what had actually happened.

Pete came into the room a few moments later, looking as though he'd been up for hours.

"Jimmy," he said.

"I'm awake," Jimmy said.

"That was Gary's mom. On the phone. They finished checking the hospitals."

The look on Pete's face told Jimmy everything he needed to know. Jimmy said nothing, and Pete stood in the doorway, looking as though he was waiting for permission to enter his own room.

"I'm not going to campus today," Pete said. "I can't."

"Me, either." Word had gotten out about the party quickly enough, especially when the police showed up at Christy's house to investigate, then gone door-to-door asking questions. There was only so much prying Jimmy could take.

Jimmy pulled himself upright, and then into a sitting position. He felt stiff, and a little bit sick, a familiar dread settling into his stomach. He hadn't slept well at all that night.

Pete came into the room and sat at the foot of the bed. He looked deeply exhausted. He looked at Jimmy, held his gaze for a little too long. "You know, I looked it up last night. People get found after way longer. Weeks, months, even years." He was nodding to himself, as though this was more for his own benefit than Jimmy's. "Especially once they start checking the highways." He looked down at his clasped hands, then back at Jimmy. "You sure you don't wanna go to school?"

Jimmy swung his legs over the side of the bed. Now that he was more fully awake he could feel the dread growing stronger, as though stoked by Pete's presence. "Maybe I will. I can grab our assignments and stuff."

"You don't have to."

"I want to," Jimmy lied, though it wasn't a lie entirely.

Pete smiled flatly. "Better you than me," he said. "I wouldn't be able to take it. You're stronger than I am, that's for sure."

Jimmy felt something inside him squeeze at that, guilt folding its way into the dread. He prayed to whatever god was above that Pete would leave him alone.

"You should probably leave soon, if you want to make it on time," Pete said, standing. "I gotta talk to my mom before she leaves."

"See you," Jimmy said quickly. If Pete picked up on his haste, he didn't show it. When he left the room, Jimmy fell back against the bed, willed his head to stop hurting and his stomach to settle.

The digital display on the bedside clock flipped silently to 8:20. Gary had been officially missing for three days.

* * *

That was the first day of the year that smelled properly like spring. The storm had churned up the winter-hardened dirt and slicked the roads, and now the sun was shining and turning everything bright and wet. At the gated entrance to the academy, Jimmy hovered on his bike, willing himself to enter. It'd be so easy to take off, find somewhere else to be. But he'd already run from one thing that day and it was only morning. So he steered his bike through the gates and toward the garages.

As he'd suspected, word had gotten around fast, and people watched him like the weather everywhere he went. The common sentiment, to his pleasant surprise, seemed not to go beyond bemused interest, especially considering that many of the underclassmen at Bullworth Academy still seemed to be under the impression that Gary Smith did not actually exist, and had never existed, and him being missing was only an extension of that. But even without that distraction, Jimmy was restless, unable to hold a thought in his head, and by the time third period came around he knew that trying to stay at school was pointless. Knowing Pete would understand if he showed up with only half the day's work, Jimmy set out toward the garages to retrieve his bike.

Being around the garages at all set off a kind of nostalgia in Jimmy that he wasn't sure how to deal with. No one hung around there much anymore, save for the occasional group smoking. Jimmy could still picture them—Peanut, Lucky, Johnny, Lola, the whole gang—leaning up against the solid brick walls, tucking cigarettes between their lips, shooting looks of hostility, or curiosity, or respect in his direction.

He had called Johnny the day it happened, while Pete called his mother, and then Gary's mother. The phone rang twice before he remembered the baby and hung up hastily. Johnny had called back almost immediately.

"Jimmy?"

"Yeah, it's me."

He'd filled Johnny in, trying to keep his voice from wavering. "We don't think he headed north, but I figure we should cover all our bases."

"Yeah, I'll keep an eye out," Johnny said, and then, "I didn't know you and Gary were still friends."

"We're not really. He's more Pete's friend than mine."

"I see," Johnny said, though he sounded skeptical.

Jimmy had more people to call but hearing Johnny's voice again, he couldn't help himself. "How are you, Johnny?"

"I'm alright, kid," he said. He paused. "I'm workin' things out. I gotta go, alright? I hope you find your friend."

"Goodbye," Jimmy said, but the line had already died.

Jimmy wheeled his bike out of the garage and pushed it toward the shop room, intending to roll through the garages for old time's sake, but a slurry of voices cut through to him and he stopped short, hiding behind one of the preliminary walls.

"...believe they ever let that fucker out of the nuthouse to begin with."

"Damn, dude."

"I mean it." The first voice was familiar enough, and Jimmy placed it as Gordon Wakefield. "Who liked him? Seriously? Even before Hopkins showed up only Pete would hang out with him."

"Well, yeah, I don't fuckin' like him either, but still." The second voice was Ivan. In the relative quiet he was able to detect and place the unmistakable sound of someone breathing in and exhaling a lungful of smoke. "Doesn't mean I want him dead."

"I do," Gordon said decisively. "Or at least, I wouldn't care if he was."

" _Damn,_ dude."

"You know, I bet Jimmy has something to do with it."

"Jesus, man."

"I'm serious! He threw the dude off a fuckin' roof and now he's playing the concerned friend? Seems suspicious."

A third voice came through, and Jimmy recognized Angie. "Jimmy wouldn't do that," she said, sounding uncertain.

"Yeah, that's easy for _you_ to say."

"Relax, Gordon," Ivan said. "Although he has a point."

"What point?"

"I mean, Jimmy did all kinds of shit. He strung everyone in the cliques along for a whole year. You saw what kind of shit he got up to. Did you see Gary after he fell off the roof? Like, actually get a look at him?"

Gordon laughed. "Practically unrecognizable."

"I heard he had _glass_ sticking out of him," Angie said.

"You heard right," Gordon replied. "Probably still has scars from it. Cunt deserved it."

" _Anyway,"_ Ivan cut in, "I mean that if Jimmy can do shit like that to Gary without remorse, who knows what else he's capable of. Maybe they got in a particularly bad fight when he showed up at Christy's party."

"I don't think so," Angie said. "Gary didn't look like he was looking for a fight when he showed up."

"You talked to him?" Ivan asked

"Uh, yeah?" Angie replied. Jimmy could imagine the look she was giving Ivan. "I was kind of helping host the party? I answered the door when he first showed up."

"Weird," Ivan said.

"How on earth is that weird?"

"I dunno," Ivan said. "I guess the freshman are rubbing off on me. Sometimes I think we all dreamed Gary up."

As Ivan spoke, his voice grew louder, and Jimmy froze, unsure of whether to shrink back against the garage walls or take off for the parking lot driveway, and in his moment of indecision Ivan, Gordon, and Angie came around the garage entrance and into view. Ivan stopped fully in his tracks, dropping his cigarette.

"Oh!" Angie squeaked. "Uh, hi Jimmy," she said guiltily.

Jimmy ignored her. He squeezed his fists around the handlebars on his bike. "Wakefield." He felt familiar anger billowing in his stomach, smothering the guilt, at least for the time being.

"Nice day, huh?" Gordon said. He pushed some of his light brown hair back behind his ear, his eyes narrowed.

"Uh-huh," Jimmy said. _Relax Jimmy_ , he thought, but the anger, as uncalled for as it may have been, was a welcome alternative to the guilt.

"Let's go, Gordon," Ivan said.

Angie's hand moved almost imperceptibly by her side, as though she wanted to reach for Jimmy. "Are you alright?" she asked.

"Yeah, Jimmy, you alright?" Gordon asked. "Something on your mind?"

 _Calm down, Jimmy boy_ , he thought, but something about the anger, the way it heightened his senses and triggered all his old reflexes, had him feeling insulated, impervious to even his own influence. He'd never liked Gordon, not since the first day he'd met him. In that moment he went from indifference to distaste, and in his anger he mistook the gap for hatred.

None of them were strangers to the kind of destruction Jimmy could cause, but it was Angie who seemed most sensitive to it. She took Ivan by the hand and pulled him away.

"Don't, Gordon," Ivan said through gritted teeth.

"No," Jimmy said. "Clearly he's got something to say. So say it, Wakefield."

Gordon just shook his head, smirking. The sight nearly made Jimmy numb with rage. A thousand thoughts sprang against some backboard in his mind, things like _who does this fucker think he is_ and _doesn't this dumb fuck know who he's talking to?_ When had people started underestimating _him_ , Jimmy Hopkins? Gordon would never have _dared_ act like this to his face two years ago. Maybe he needed to be taught a hard lesson.

Gordon joined Ivan and Angie, who were walking swiftly away. He flicked the last of his cigarette into a puddle, where it fizzled out and sank. Angie gave him a kind but reserved look. "See you, Jimmy," she said quickly.

"Yeah, see you," Gordon said, and then, as though he couldn't help himself: "Try not to get anyone else killed."

Jimmy pivoted his bike away from him, put one hand on the head tube and another on the seat tube, and hauled the entire thing at Gordon. Before Gordon could even register properly what was happening, Jimmy was upon him, had him pinned to the concrete. Ivan swore and staggered back, but Jimmy wasn't looking at Ivan, or Angie, and wasn't really looking at Gordon either. He got two solid punches in, right into Gordon's face, before suddenly his view was blocked off, the space between himself and Gordon suddenly breached. He was forced back by the sheer unexpectedness of it, and it took him a moment to register what had even happened.

Angie had pushed her entire body between Gordon and Jimmy. She sprang up, dusting gravel off her knees. The look she gave him—a mixture of disgust and disappointment—didn't extinguish his anger entirely, but it was enough. Hands still clenching and unclenching over and over, Jimmy grabbed his bike and stormed away, dragging it along until he reached the downward sloping driveway, where he threw the wheels to the pavement and hopped on.

 _This is all Gary's fault, in a way,_ he reasoned. He squeezed the firm grips of the handlebars and wished he'd hit Gordon harder.

Even in his anger, Jimmy knew that campus was the last place he needed to be right then, and that Crabblesnitch would be coming to retrieve and reprimand him any minute, and his usual other escape was Pete's house, the _other_ last place he needed to be, so he weighed his other limited options and settled on Trent's house.

Trent's father wasn't home, though even if he had been it wouldn't have mattered much to Jimmy right then. Trent answered the door, and Jimmy pushed inside, smothered Trent's greeting immediately with a kiss.

Trent tugged away. "Christ, relax, at least let me shut the door..." Jimmy struggled to maintain dominance anyway, but for all his toughness and experience, Trent was still bigger than him, and he pulled Jimmy firmly away.

"What is your problem?" Trent asked, searching Jimmy's eyes for some explanation for Jimmy's sudden aggression. "Are you okay?"

"Of course I'm okay," Jimmy said numbly.

Trent, though, was unexpectedly perceptive, at least in areas of his own relative expertise. He released Jimmy. "I dunno, Jimmy boy," he said. "You seem wired." He caught sight of Jimmy tensely clasped hands. "Have you been fighting?"

"Huh?" Jimmy looked down, saw the long scrapes on his knuckles where they'd scraped the asphalt as he grabbed the bike off the ground, saw where the flesh was beginning to bruise after colliding with Gordon's face. "I guess."

"Who?" Trent asked.

"Why do you care?" Jimmy said.

"Uh, I guess I don't," Trent said, but he had always been transparent about his feelings, and Jimmy could see right through him. Finally, he said, "Just, UNH might recall their acceptance if you start fucking up your behavioral record now."

The conversation had drifted to college, and Jimmy felt his second and only other outlet of physical release slip away from him. "Don't fucking talk to me about _behavioral records_ , Northwick," he said bitterly. He slid onto the steps and leaned his head against the wall, suddenly feeling dizzy.

Trent was too simple a person to be offended by Jimmy pointing out the obvious, and he simply sat beside Jimmy, on the same step but a respectable distance away. "I was just looking out," he said. He took one of Jimmy's hands in his own, clinically looking over the cuts on his knuckles.

"There's gravel in your hand," he noted.

Jimmy made a noncommittal sound, uninterested.

Trent released his hand. Jimmy could hear the old steps creak as Trent leaned against them, and he permitted himself to look at Trent. He was getting better at just looking at people he was supposed to be intimate with.

"It's Gary, isn't it?" Trent said.

Jimmy sighed so heavily that he thought he might start crying, though the feeling passed quickly. _Jesus, what is wrong with me today?_ "I guess so," he said.

"I'd ask if you wanna talk about it, but I already know you don't like telling me things." He said this easily, without resentment, merely stating a fact.

"Yeah," Jimmy confirmed.

"I kind of have something to tell you," Trent said, with an ease Jimmy would never quite understand, would only ever approximate on his own.

"What?"

"Let me get something for your hand, and I'll tell you," Trent said. He pulled to his feet and disappeared up the stairs. Jimmy could hear him rummaging around in the kitchen. He knew Trent better than to mistake this for an act of kindness—Trent wasn't the best problem solver Jimmy had ever met but he had the drive of a problem solver, which was respectable in its own right, and he saw the gravel embedded in Jimmy's skin as simply a thing to be taken care of. Regardless, when he returned with peroxide and bandages, and took Jimmy's hand in his own to clean his scrapes, Jimmy let the feeling of Trent's warm fingers slowly ebb away at the final remains of the anger from before. Just for that moment, he let himself forget that lacking he felt, every time he held Trent's hand, every time he kissed Trent, that feeling that he was going through the motions of a relationship, and he let himself like Trent just as he was, as a hand that was willing to hold his. By the time Trent was wrapping his hand, he felt calmer.

"You at least going to tell me who you decked?" Trent asked.

Jimmy shook his head. "Doesn't matter."

Trent rolled his eyes, but he didn't push further, just set the bandages and peroxide to the side and pushed back to the other side of the staircase, his long legs bent against the lower steps.

"What were you going to tell me?" Jimmy asked.

Trent bit his lip in an unmistakable portrait of someone deep in thought.

After a while, he began. "Do you remember how Damon and Casey were at Christy's party?"

"Yeah," Jimmy said after a moment. He'd been avoiding thinking about that night at all, and the memories came flowing slowly back. "They said you asked for Kirby," he said quickly.

A different person may have looked guilty or caught, but Trent merely looked relieved that Jimmy was filling in some of the pieces on his own. "Yeah," he said. "I've been thinking about him a lot."

"Yeah?"

"Mhmm." Trent rolled the bottle of peroxide in his hands. "I figured, after I dropped out and he graduated and moved, that, y'know, that was that, and I'd never see him again. But it doesn't feel over, you know what I mean? Like, I feel like it ended before it was supposed to."

"I _do_ know what you mean," Jimmy said.

"Once I move to L.A. in the summer, I want to start over, you know? Like, really start over. I feel like I need to talk to Kirby one more time. Things ended pretty badly between him and me."

"Okay," Jimmy said. He felt some endpoint coming up, some end to this tangent. "What does that have to do with me."

"I mean..." Trent began. He set the bottle of peroxide down. "I guess I'm kind of breaking up with you."

Jimmy blinked. "Oh," he said.

"Fuck," Trent said quickly. "This is like, the worst time to be doing this."

"No, it's okay," Jimmy said. It _was_ okay, something worthy of some guilt on its own. Jimmy had never really felt like they were together in the first place. Why start now, at the end of things?

Trent looked relieved. "You're sure you're okay?"

"Yeah," Jimmy said, and added, "You should call Kirby," for good measure. He felt in a bubble then, the post-breakup bubble that always tended to suspend him right after a split, that would snap out of existence the moment Trent left his sight, and he thought the bubble was the best place for confessions.

"Remember when you asked when I knew I liked guys?" Jimmy asked. Trent nodded. "It was Kirby. We made out in the boiler room at Bullworth after you guys broke up."

Jimmy didn't know how Trent would take that, but Trent just chuckled. "That sounds about right."


	15. Jimmy, He Whispers

_**SPRING**_ _ **, 20**_ _ **09 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 15**_

" _God knows you're on my mind, you can't try to tell him otherwise. God knows it's only time before I break the chain in my eyes."  
_ Manchester Orchestra, "Jimmy, He Whispers" - _Mean Everything to Nothing,_ 2009

* * *

On his way back to campus that night, Jimmy was on edge, expecting the headmaster, or Miss Danvers, to come around the corner at any minute and apprehend him. The bandage on his fist felt like a blinking, incriminating citation, and he tugged the sleeve of his raincoat over it every time the dying afternoon sunlight glanced across it.

It wasn't unlike Dr. Crabblesnitch to send a prefect to the dorms to collect students for punishment, and so Jimmy was tense as he climbed the dorm stairs to his room. But the way was clear, and as he slipped into his room and shut the door behind him, he allowed himself to relax.

Only moments after he'd shed his coat, the door flew open, so hard that it cracked against the adjacent wall. Jimmy spun around. Pete stood in the doorway, visibly winded, holding his hand over his diaphragm.

"Agh...Jimmy..." he wheezed.

"Pete?"

Pete kicked the door shut. "Ran...the whole way..."

"Are you okay?" All the tension from earlier was gone, replaced by concern. "What happened?"

Pete collapsed on Jimmy's bed. "Oh, god...so out of shape..."

"What's wrong Pete? Is it Gary?"

Pete merely nodded, unable to speak. Jimmy allowed him to catch his breath, until he was finally able to speak clearly.

"You remember the night of the party, when you caught me and Gary together?" He said this unabashedly, evidently emboldened by either exhaustion or urgency.

"Of course."

"Well, right before, I was telling him about this...this place I went, last summer. After I got the jeep, I wanted to like, go on an adventure, right?"

"Sure."

"And ever since I was a kid I've always wanted to stay in a lookout tower. Like, for forest fires?"

"Okay," Jimmy said, struggling to connect that to Gary in his mind.

Pete took another deep breath, though this one seemed more from excitement than anything. "And so I rented this watch station for a night. In Magalloway Mountain. It's the only one in New Hampshire you can rent."

"Okay...?"

"It wasn't even cool, by the way. I mean, it was nice, but it was a _cabin_ , not a tower. There wasn't even a cool view. I drove all the way to Pittsburg for a shitty cabin."

"Petey, I'm really going to need you to get to the point."

"Okay!" Pete swallowed again, his hands shaking. "I told him about it, and how I had like, this...revelation there. About...him. Like, I was up there and I was alone, and I didn't pack enough food, and I was bored, and I was kinda freaked out once it got dark out, and I was laying in bed and I thought 'God, I wish Gary was here'. Like, even though I was still pissed at him for all the shit he did that year, and he still wasn't really talking to us. I didn't think of you or anybody else. Just Gary. That's when I knew that..." Pete seemed reluctant, even then, to say it. "I got really weird about it, and I started thinking I never would have had that revelation if not for the cabin and then he kissed me."

"You think he's there?" Jimmy asked. He could already see holes presenting themselves in Pete's idea—if Gary had been illegally staying at a cabin for three days, someone would've found him and kicked him out by then.

"I think so," Pete said, with such resolution that Jimmy couldn't bear to contradict him.

"Did you tell the police?"

"What am I supposed to tell them? 'Hey, officer, I don't have any solid leads about Gary but I realized I was his bitch forever in a shitty cabin in the mountains, maybe you should send a squad up?'"

"Yeah, alright," Jimmy said. "What do you want to do then?" But he already knew what Pete wanted to do, and he could see that Pete knew he knew.

"You'd better put your coat back on."

* * *

It was a four hour drive up to the cabins in Pittsburg, New Hampshire, and the sun was already setting as they set out. Jimmy couldn't explain right away what compelled him to go along, what made him hold his tongue every time he wanted to tell Pete that this was a bad idea, and what was he expecting to find, and how were they going to hike the trail up the mountains at night? Part of it, he was sure, was the hard determination in Pete's eyes, the desire to do _something_ about Gary's absence, something more than dialing his number only to reach his voice mailbox again. Part of it was the fact that he knew both of them liked the feeling of doing something to break the tense monotony that had crept into their lives once the initial whirl of police and questions had subsided. And part of it, Jimmy concluded as he watched the trees whip by on I-93, was his resignation to his own shame.

The shame only grew as he rode in relative silence in the passenger seat of the Pete's mother's Ford Explorer. The radio in the Explorer worked, and was flipped to an alternative station and dialed low, an indistinct buzzing in his ear. He thought of Pete's voice echoing from what felt like a lifetime ago, two autumns back— _we could be listening to anything you want right now._ It seemed every moment he was letting someone down, and the memory of himself snubbing Pete's mixtape idea suddenly felt disproportionately worse, and somewhat telling in hindsight.

 _If I realized I loved someone in a cabin in the woods, who would I tell?_ Jimmy wasn't sure he could tell anyone. But Pete had told him. _Because he thought it could help Gary,_ Jimmy reasoned. _Your secret won't help anyone. Everyone knows he was drunk. Everyone knows he stole the jeep._ His hands shook. He needed a cigarette but it was raining and he didn't dare smoke in Pete's mother's car.

He watched Pete to keep his mind off his own thoughts, grateful for the cover provided by the growing darkness. Pete was watching the road carefully, leaning forward a bit in his seat, ever the defensive driver.

No, not defensive driving, Jimmy abruptly realized. There was no snow, or ice, and the rain wasn't hard enough to warrant such a close watch on the roads, and on top of that Pete had taken that stretch of I-93 at least a dozen times by then. He watched Pete more closely, saw the way his eyes were trained on the trees, flickering forward with every passing mile, watching a stretch until it disappeared behind them and then searching ahead for a new copse to train his gaze on. Jimmy had limited experience with highway driving but the few times he'd been on that stretch of the highway he'd only ever looked ahead at the familiar terrain, save for the occasional glance at his rearview and side mirrors, par for the course for any trip...

The realization rolled over him, as hard and driving as the storm. Pete was looking for a wreckage. Jimmy had underestimated Pete once again, had misidentified his pragmatism as irrational optimism. Looking at Pete then, watching the way he calmly but doggedly scanned the shoulder of the highway, he realized he didn't know Pete half as well as he thought he did. He turned away, leaned his head against the cold glass of the window, and wished he could break his fingers against his own face.

* * *

Somehow he managed to fall asleep, the even motion of the Explorer on the highway lulling him into unconsciousness, where he dreamed of nothing. A change in motion as the Explorer came to a stop was enough to shake him from sleep, and the addition of Pete's hand on his shoulder gently shaking him brought him fully awake.

"Jimmy," Pete hissed.

Night had fully fallen, and Jimmy could just barely make out the vegetation beyond the shoulder of the highway. Jimmy peered at the display on the center console of the Explorer—they'd been on the road for maybe two hours, staying true on I-93, and the highway had narrowed out, the trees growing lower and the terrain more mountainous. The car ground into the mud in the unblocked shoulder, the headlights lighting across greenery and dirt as Pete pulled the car in. The storm had picked up, and rain rapped hard against the roof of the car.

"I think I saw tire marks going into the trees," Pete whispered, more from fear than a real need for secrecy. He was visibly shaking. He reached into the backseat and procured a flashlight. "You can stay in here, if you want," he said.

"No," Jimmy said right away. If there was anything he could do, anything at all to even begin to repent, it was this. "I'll go with you. Of course I'm going with you."

Pete nodded. "Thank you, Jimmy. Seriously. I'm really glad you're here."

Jimmy turned away from Pete, bit down on his tongue until he tasted blood, and opened the passenger door and stepped out into the night.

Outside, it was pouring rain, landing colder than seemed appropriate for spring, and the thunder had returned, crashing in the distance. The occasional flash of lightning harshly illuminated the densely packed trees. Rain poured into his coat, into his eyes, across his vision and in rivulets into the green forest, and across the path of Pete's flashlight, its beam floating weakly across the green. Another flash of lightning left them in darkness in its wake, and Pete reached out and grabbed Jimmy's arm as the two of the slid on the loosening ground and further into the shrouded ravine, and then the beam caught a flash of a darker, shining green, glittering faintly and unnaturally against the thinning copse that lead to it.

"Is that...?" Jimmy called over the storm. As if cued, a flash of lightning illuminated what it could through the vegetative cover, and the form of the overturned jeep became unmistakable. Pete released Jimmy's arm and slid down the rest of the ravine so quickly that Jimmy could hardly keep up with him. As Jimmy followed him down, pushing branches aside, he though _of course, someone already found him. Gary could never sit still, couldn't handle not being in control of everything, even a fucking wreck. Gary would never stay in one place for three days._ But even as he thought this, over and over, he knew, somehow, what the truth was, and therefore Pete's choked gasp as he pulled the driver's side door open came as no surprise, or, as he came closer, the sight of Gary's arm, then his damp, matted hair, coming into view. For the second time that day he felt insulated, as though nothing could touch him. Not the rain, or the trees, or the sight of Pete struggling to free Gary, or, as he ran to help, the sight of Gary's pale, gaunt face.

Pete cut through Gary's seatbelt, and Gary's body slumped to the crumpled roof of the jeep. _He's dead,_ Jimmy thought, just as Pete called, _he's alive._

* * *

Pete didn't cry as Gary was hoisted onto a stretcher, or as he and Jimmy were ushered into the back of the ambulance. He didn't cry the entire drive home, as they listened to the whine of the ambulance until it mingled with the rain and became white noise. Jimmy held Pete's shaking hand while Pete held Gary's, cold and wet and limp, once again the thing that held the three of them together. Pete steadily answered all the EMT's questions, things about Gary's medication and his health that Jimmy couldn't have begun to answer. He thought he heard Pete's voice waver, as he said _right, about three and a half full days_. But that was the only time.


	16. Dance Little Liar

_**SPRING**_ _ **, 20**_ _ **09 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 16**_

 _"And the clean coming will hurt, and you can never get it spotless when there's dirt beneath the dirt..."  
_ Arctic Monkeys, "Dance Little Liar" - _Humbug,_ 2009

* * *

It was well into the morning when a doctor found Pete and Jimmy in the white-walled, olive-tiled waiting room. Gary was dehydrated severely—this struck Jimmy as almost amusing in his exhaustion, that Gary had nearly died of dehydration while water poured down around him, just barely out of reach—and had to be on fluids. He had pressure sores from where the belt had suspended him, and his leg was badly broken, and they were fairly sure he was concussed, though they had mostly ruled out significant brain damage. They suspected he'd been too weak and intoxicated to struggle free and with nothing to cut himself loose had spent days in and out of consciousness, slowly growing even weaker. The rest of the doctor's speech crumbled before it could properly reach Jimmy's ears, only fragments of _very lucky you found him_ and _just a couple more days and he might've_ and the like.

The police came around soon after, to give Pete a report on his jeep, and Jimmy took a moment to excuse himself, making his way toward a wide automatic door labeled PARKING. The visitor garage was wide, with a low ceiling, and quiet, and he couldn't smoke there but being alone was good enough. He breathed slowly and evenly until the slight tremor in his hands began to subside. Gary was alive. Beat to hell, but alive. It was still his fault, of course. In the light of day, with Gary breathing somewhere inside the building, he could admit that. But some of that oppressive cloud had lifted, and he felt so free compared to before that he wanted to cry.

Pete found him leaning against a wall near the door a while later. "Hey," he said. He looked lighter, too.

"Hey."

"Cops had to take some stuff. For evidence. They believe that no foul play was involved, but they have to be sure." He leaned against the wall beside Jimmy.

"Makes sense," Jimmy said. They spoke quietly; the smallest sounds echoed across the parking lot, quiet and almost empty at that time of day, and it felt wrong to disturb the relative silence.

"Oh, you know what's funny?" Pete said. "You'll never guess what was in one of the evidence bags."

"What?"

" _Pet Sounds_. In perfect condition. It's pretty much the only thing that made it through unharmed." Pete breathed a laugh. "What are the odds?" His voice cracked, and he laughed again. He turned away from Jimmy and put a hand over his eyes and began to cry. Jimmy put an arm around him, and Pete fell against him and into his arms. They stayed that way until Pete's mom came to get them.

* * *

Word of Gary's recovery spread the way word does in a place like Bullworth—quickly, and without the consent of anyone involved. By the time Jimmy dragged himself to the dorms an hour before first bell, once again braving the masses with the hope of keeping his GPA and attendance at least lukewarm, people were already whispering about Gary. The fact that Gary was missing for three days seemed to have taken hold of the freshmen—never mind that it was really almost four days he'd gone undiscovered. The biblical quality of this particular detail was not lost on them, and Gary's status as the school cryptid was solidified even further.

Jimmy knew better than to actually sit any of his lessons, decided instead to hope that his teachers would take pity on him and give him his homework and a pass for the day, a wager that paid off. The fact that he hadn't slept in over a day and looked it probably helped.

As he left the Biology room, he heard footsteps come up behind him, and a small hand land on his arm.

"Hey, Jimmy," Angie said. "You look like hell."

"Thanks, I feel like it," Jimmy said. Almost immediately, his eyes were drawn to a deep, blotchy bruise on her arm. He felt his heart drop a little.

Angie caught his gaze. "Yeah, that was you," she said, quietly but firmly. "When you were attacking Gordon. I know you didn't mean it, but you did it." The words seemed to hang in the air. Even on his best form, he couldn't have challenged it. Not from Angie.

"I'm sorry," he said. "Gordon, too. Fuck, is he okay?"

"No," she said bluntly. "You broke his nose. He's healing fine and everything but you can't exactly hide that from the staff. He got sent to the office. I had to really pull for you, Jimmy," she continued. "I had to threaten Gordon with all kinds of stuff. Me and Ivan told Dr. Crabblesnitch that he provoked you physically. We had to make it sound like you attacked each other."

"I'm sorry," Jimmy said again.

"You should be," Angie said. She looked like she wanted to say more, but she didn't, merely bit her lip and then put a hand on his shoulder and squeezed.

Jimmy told himself right then that he'd find Gordon and apologize, and then he'd go right into Dr. Crabblesnitch's office and tell the truth, tell him that he'd attacked a fellow student without being suitably provoked, consequences be damned. But he wouldn't. He wasn't perfect, and he had other secrets to worry about, and thoughts of Gordon fell quickly by the wayside.

"I'm glad Gary's okay," Angie said, and turned to make her way back to the Biology classroom. As she left, Jimmy replied, just loudly enough for himself to hear: _me too_.

* * *

Another day passed before Gary was ready for visitors. Pete and Jimmy sat in the visitor garage for the second time that week, this time in the Explorer. Pete snapped the radio off, gave Jimmy a wide-eyed look.

"I feel like I shouldn't be this excited," Pete said. "It's a hospital, after all."

"Excited is okay," Jimmy replied. "He'll be glad you're excited, I bet."

"Yeah, or maybe he'll get mad at us for not being solemn enough," Pete said. "You know Gary." He twisted the ignition off, dropping the keys in his excitement. "Fuck," he muttered, fumbling for them. Jimmy laughed a little, unable to help himself, and Pete glanced at him sheepishly. "Don't make fun of me, dick," he said, but he was smiling, too.

He leaned back in his chair. "God, who the hell falls in love with _Gary?_ " he said, the word he'd avoided before falling from his mouth easily. It seemed to embolden him enough to finally push his door open. He seemed to hum with some small, nervous energy as they made their way up an elevator and across several bustling floors to Gary's room, though Jimmy thought he could have been imagining it just as well. They made their way to a desk flanked by corridors, and the receptionist pointed them in the direction of Gary's room. They followed his direction to an open hall of doorless rooms, knocked on the wall just outside of Gary's.

"Come in," a nurse called.

The room was very wide, and clean, with a narrow gray couch beneath a window that opened into a bland view of another part of the hospital but which let plenty of sunlight in. There was Gary, propped up in bed.

"Morons," he croaked.

Pete looked like he might cry again. With directions from the nurse, he grabbed the couch, which was on wheels, from beneath the window and dragged it to Gary's bedside, and he and Jimmy sat there with Pete closest to Gary.

"Heya, Gary," Pete said.

"Femme-boy," Gary greeted, but he was smiling. When had Gary started looking at Pete like that? Jimmy struggled to remember any of the visits to the psych ward, which he'd mostly blocked from memory.

"How ya feeling?"

"Oh, you mean aside from my eviscerated leg, and the fact that I can barely move without getting tired? Pretty good," he said. He seemed incapable of speaking at much louder than a quiet conversational volume, but somehow his voice carried the same theatrics as always, which Jimmy took as a good sign.

"That blows," Pete said. He motioned toward an empty tray on Gary's rolling bedside table. "How's the hospital food?"

"No idea," Gary replied. "Can't keep much down yet. Which sucks because I'm pretty hungry."

"Damn," Pete said.

"Yeah. It's like, constant insatiable hunger. I feel like a fucking wendigo."

"You look like a wendigo," Jimmy said, speaking up for the first time since he'd arrived.

Gary laughed, taken aback, then winced. "Ah, fuck, don't make me laugh."

"Sorry," Jimmy said, but he was still smiling. Making Gary laugh felt good, like a tiny undeniable reassurance that Gary was definitely alive. He felt like any second the image of Gary would peel away and reality would snap into place, and he'd find himself back on the highway roadside, looking down at Gary's corpse.

Pete stood. "I just remembered, I gotta call your mom and my mom. They wanted me to check in when I got here. Don't move," he said to Gary.

"Oh, fucking hilarious," Gary said. "You're really killing me."

Pete slipped around the hospital bed and went off in search of a phone before Jimmy could protest, and the nurse stepped out soon after, and then he was alone with Gary.

"So, James," Gary said. "Once again, your psycho ass has landed me in a hospital."

Jimmy nearly choked. "What?"

Gary laughed out loud at Jimmy's shock, winced again. "I'm fucking with you. I just remember being mad at you when I stole Pete's car. Ergo, the crash is your fault."

Jimmy felt the flash of panic fade. His hunch was right, of course—there was no reason Gary would have known just how right his accusation was. "I guess I can play scapegoat this time," he said as evenly as he could manage.

"Can't go around taking responsibility for my _own_ actions, you understand," Gary said. "I've got a reputation to uphold."

"Oh, of course," Jimmy said. "You might lose face, and that'd be just unthinkable."

Gary laughed, flinched.

"Sorry," Jimmy said.

"It's no big deal. It's more exhausting than it is painful." He breathed deeply, which seemed to take some effort, and then exhaled. His features smoothed. "Fuck, I have _no_ energy..." he slurred. "Don't let me fall asleep."

"I'll try."

"I mean it. Punch me right in the cast, if you have to," Gary said, voice barely above a whisper. Jimmy almost wanted to let him, as he studied the peaceful expression coming over Gary's face. People always looked different when they were asleep, or in a state of half-sleep, and Jimmy could look at Gary's face like it was some separate thing, some part of Gary but not all of him, a shell without Gary in it. He examined Gary's scarred, heavy brow, his full lips and high cheekbones. He thought he could see him how Pete saw him, when he looked like that. Shamelessly, he allowed his mind to wander—Gary's lips were scarred and chapped, the aftermath of the dehydration, but he could imagine them as they usually were, full and flushed. He didn't allow himself to undress Gary with his eyes, as much as the form of his broad shoulders beneath his hospital gown tempted him, but he could allow himself to think about Gary's lips, and the things that could be done with them. Yes, there was something there. He could certainly see it.

He allowed the secret to unfurl in his mind, slowly. Here in the light of day, sunlight softening Gary's face, he thought he could finally say it. Maybe he could wait for Gary to fall asleep, listen for his breathing to deepen and slow and then he could say it to the room, unburdening himself via a technicality. Just as he thought that, Gary spoke.

"Pete's a piece of work, huh?"

"Hm?" Jimmy asked, trying not to sound startled.

Gary's eyes were still closed. "Petey." He made a sharp sound that was mostly an exhalation, which Jimmy identified as a laugh. "Who the hell falls in love with _me_?"

 _I guess I have, in a way_ , Jimmy thought. He couldn't even entertain the idea of saying this out loud to Gary, could only imagine the way it might break over their heads like a bout of thunder. Maybe the look on Gary's face would be worth it alone. Jimmy realized at once that he _did_ love Gary, in a twisted way. It wasn't the kind of fondness he felt for Petey, or Zoe, or the love he thought he'd felt for any of his other romantic partners. It wasn't the love Pete felt for Gary, either. It was some inexplicable magnetism, some extension of the hatred he felt for Gary. He struggled to differentiate them at times in the way people are won't to do but even then he knew to some degree that hate and love weren't so different, were just different arms of passion. He wondered what Pete had said, how Pete had finally confessed his own kind of love to Gary, long after Gary already knew. He wondered what Pete would do, burdened with a secret like his, a secret betrayal.

 _If Pete had a secret like this, he'd tell Gary right away,_ Jimmy thought.

"Gary, I have to tell you something," he said, before he could stop himself.

"Hmm." Gary's eyes were still closed.

"Gary, listen," Jimmy said.

Slowly, Gary opened his eyes, narrowed them a little at Jimmy.

"Can't you see I'm trying to sleep, you troglodyte?" he whispered.

"I _have_ to tell you something," Jimmy said again.

"You said that. Spit it out."

Jimmy clenched his fists, squeezed. _Do it now, pussy. Do it now, or you'll never get over it._

"It was my fault," he said. His voice sounded smaller than he could ever remember it sounding.

"Yeah, we established that," Gary said, but he was more awake now, his eyes trained on Jimmy, and Jimmy could tell he had caught some thread of a larger confession.

"I saw you. When you left with Pete's keys. I let you walk out the door. I could've stopped you. I wasn't that drunk. I definitely could've stopped you, and I didn't."

Gary looked at him, expression unchanged. If it were anyone else, Jimmy would have repeated himself, but he knew Gary heard every word. "You let me go," he finally said.

Jimmy nodded stiffly.

Gary turned slowly away from him, his eyes following steadily. He stared at the ceiling. He was silent for a long time. Jimmy almost mistook the silence for theatrics, thought Gary was letting it go on for effect, until finally Gary spoke.

"I've been trying so hard," was all he said. His voice wavered the slightest bit. Jimmy put his head in his hands, and all the guilt came crashing up like a wave inside him and he cried for the first time in years with his face buried in his hands, covering his eyes so he might pretend, childishly, that Gary was not there.

 _I can handle it,_ he thought. _Forgiveness is a type of love and rejection is a type of hate, right?_ _I can handle Gary hating me. I've done it before. Who does Gary hate more than me? If I can handle hate and forgiveness, then I can handle everything in between._

He was wrong, though, which he'd realize soon enough. He didn't need to worry about in-betweens. He'd failed to realize that if hate and love were all just forms of passion, then they weren't really opposites. The real opposite was to be indifferent, to look upon some great betrayal and feel nothing. When he'd finally managed to get his sobs under control, and wiped the tears off his face, he looked up and found Gary watching him cry, his face registering absolutely no emotion at all.

"You know I might never be able to walk again?" Gary asked conversationally.

"I'm so sorry, Gary," Jimmy said. "I swear."

"My femur broke. I think I have nerve damage." He said this in the tone one might reserve for remarking on the weather.

"You could have _died,_ " Jimmy blurted, as if Gary needed reminding. "If I'd known…I would have stopped you. I would've stopped you if I'd known."

"Mm. But you did know, didn't you?"

"No!"

"So if it had been Pete, you would've let him go? If it had been pretty much anyone else? You would've let them go?"

Jimmy opened his mouth but he could not refute this, the silence incriminating him beyond repair, and he broke into fresh sobs, burying his face in his hands again. He hated crying, _hated it_ , but he was helpless in the face of his own guilt, and what were his own preferences in the shadow of what he'd done? When he stripped it down, stripped away the names and context and pretense, the simple fact was that he'd toyed around with someone's life…and he'd done it because he was _annoyed_ with them.

When he looked up from his hands, Gary was turned away again, his jaw set.

"Say something," Jimmy said.

"Okay," Gary replied immediately. "Get out."

Jimmy couldn't argue, and he stood so quickly that the couch flew backward a few inches on its wheels. Midway across the room, he turned on his heel.

"Gary," he said, something horrible occurring to him.

"I said get _out._ " Finally emotion began to creep into Gary's voice. "I will _scream_ for the nurse, I swear to God."

"You can't tell Pete," Jimmy said.

"You're going to tell me what to do?" Gary's voice dripped with venom. "You're going to stand over my fucking hospital bed when I can't even attack you and _tell me what to do_?"

" _Please_ don't tell Pete," Jimmy said, forcing himself to plead.

"You don't get to decide what I tell Pete. God, the fucking _audacity_. You're...you really fucking _hate_ me, don't you? Get the fuck out before I hurt myself trying to kill you." He had begun to cry. Jimmy couldn't count the times he'd wished by every superstition he knew for a chance to see Gary cry. And now he was, looking like he was feeling all the hate he'd ever felt at once, and Jimmy couldn't think of a moment he'd ever want to revel in less.

"I'll leave if you promise not to tell Pete. I swear, you'll never see me again," Jimmy tried.

"Fine!" Gary said, his voice scratching against his throat. In his agitation, the cut above his forehead had begun to bleed, and fresh blood bloomed against the bandage. He stuck his hand into the air between himself and Jimmy. Jimmy closed the gap, stuck his hand in Gary's in a useless act of agreement, and he could feel a part of himself being signed away to Gary forever as Gary looked him right in the eyes and lied in the way only he could.

 _"I promise."_

* * *

Jimmy didn't see Pete again until much later, as he waited next to Pete's car in the visitor's garage. Pete approached so quietly that Jimmy nearly leaped from his skin when he heard the automatic doors unlock.

"Hey, Pete," he said, his tone a distant facsimile of friendliness.

"Just get in the car," Pete replied.

The drive home was long and quiet.


	17. Junebug

_**SPRING**_ _ **, 20**_ _ **09 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 17**_

 _"And that was when I loved you best. We were kids then—we shouldn't think about the rest."  
_ Robert Francis, "Junebug" - _Before Nightfall,_ 2009

* * *

There was something he could still do, and he spent the next couple days doing it, asking around, prodding the administration for numbers. He called Trent, who informed him, after Jimmy prodded for information, that his father was home, and their only land line was, indeed, in the kitchen, right by the front room.

Trent got to the Happy Diner before Jimmy, greeted him with a toss of his head from his spot against the outside wall when he heard the wheels of Jimmy's bike skirring across the pavement. It was early evening, and the sun was beginning to set.

"We're not having a date, are we?" Trent asked, grinning. "We're not supposed to do date stuff anymore, idiot. That's how breaking up works."

"Shut up," Jimmy said, and then, "Here." He handed Trent the little folded Post-It note he'd scrawled the number on.

Trent took it. "This isn't yours."

"Nope," Jimmy said. "It's Kirby's."

Trent's eyebrows shot up. He looked at the number, back at Jimmy. "Really?"

"Yup." Jimmy nodded at the payphone against the outside wall. "That's why I had you come out here. I want you to call him now."

"Now?"

"Yeah. I went through hell to track down that number, okay? The dude's untraceable. I want to make sure you actually do it."

"What the hell do I say?"

"You'll figure it out," Jimmy said.

Jimmy only stuck around for long enough to see Trent dial, then swung his leg over his bike and pushed off downhill, away from the diner and back toward campus. Curiosity got the best of him and he came to a stop once again, turning to watch Trent over his shoulder.

He could see Trent's brow knit in concentration, leaned back against the frame of the payphone. He saw him say something into the receiver. Then, Jimmy saw the tension smooth from Trent's face like a shoreline flattened beneath the tide. Trent smiled, and Jimmy knew things would go alright for him. He kicked off against the pavement and angled his bike toward the sunset.

* * *

The next call he made himself, the next morning in the front office of Bullworth's main building. The phone rang a few times before Johnny picked up.

"Hel-lo?"

"Hi, Johnny, it's Jimmy."

"Oh. Hi, kid. Didn't recognize the number."

"That's alright." Jimmy paused, formulating his questions.

"You find Gary?" Johnny asked.

"I did," Jimmy said. "That's why I'm calling, actually."

"Why, is everything okay?"

"Yeah. Sorry, I'm not calling about Gary. Just...some stuff happened, and I feel like I have to follow up on some things, you know?"

"Sure."

Jimmy took a breath. "You seen Vance lately?"

"Of course," Johnny said. "Why?"

"Have you guys, like...talked at all about me?"

"In what manner, exactly?" Johnny adopted an impatient tone, sounding very much like the Johnny he remembered, and Jimmy felt spurred by the familiarity.

"I just mean, the two of us left off on a weird note and it kind of had to do with you, and I just want to make sure everything's cool between all of us."

The line went quiet for a moment. "Christ, I didn't mean to scare you when I gave you that speech last year."

Jimmy blinked. "What?"

"I dunno, do you think I'm angry with you or something?"

"Angry about...Vance?"

"Yeah. Kid, Vance tells me everything. Sooner or later, anyway. I know about him and you. To a modest degree, anyway," he added, in a tone that suggested Vance's retelling of the events had not been entirely modest at all. "And I know about how he feels about me. We're working that out."

"Oh," Jimmy said. Once again, he'd realized that he didn't know anyone quite as well as he thought he did. "Well, fuck."

"Is that all you called about, Jimmy?"

"Yeah, I guess so. Wait, hang on," he said quickly.

"Hmm?"

"What are you gonna do if he can't get over you?"

"Jesus, Jimmy, I'm just about to head into work."

"Please. Hear me out. Give me the condensed version."

The line quieted as Johnny thought. "That's the kind of bridge you cross when you come to it, alright? That's all I can tell you. But shit, listen, kid—that's my problem now, okay?"

Jimmy couldn't help but feel for Vance then. Johnny was the kind of man you fell hopelessly in love with. Maybe Jimmy couldn't, and never had, but he could understand it. How did you stay in someone's life when you loved them and they couldn't love you back? Maybe you cut your losses, and just take the good thing you've got for what it is. Maybe you pine till they give you a chance. Maybe you just walk away from the whole thing entirely. He could see each one playing out just as equally possible as the one before it.

He shook his head. Johnny was right. It wasn't his problem anymore.

"You hear me, Hopkins?"

"I hear you," Jimmy said.


	18. Left and Right in the Dark (Summer 2009)

_**SUMMER 2009  
**_ _ **Chapter 18**_

 _"And I'm on my way...oh, somewhere! Feels like I'm going left and right in the dark."  
_ Julian Casablancas, "Left and Right in the Dark" _-_ _Phrazes for the Young_ , 2009

* * *

The rest of April passed just as wet and rainy as ever before giving way to May, where the sun began to rise earlier more regularly. The rest of Jimmy's final year at Bullworth passed so easily and uneventfully that when the day of his final class rolled around, and Mr. Galloway told them all with tears in his eyes that they'd all go on to do great things, and shook their hands as they walked out his classroom for the last time, he could not help but feel that things had ended before they were meant to, his high school career inconclusively suspended. Still, he was able to take in a thrill as he realized he never had to sit in a classroom again if he didn't want to, and he took part in the yearly Bullworth tradition of standing on the foyer catwalk with his fellow seniors and throwing the worthless contents of their backpacks into the entryway below, while raucously singing a suitably inappropriate version of the school fight song, written decades ago by some pioneer rogue.

He knew the source of his unease, as he shuffled through a flurry of textbooks and copy paper and out into the courtyard. He'd been looking forward to this day since his first day at Bullworth, but somewhere along the way he'd begun to simply accept that Pete would be there on the catwalk with him. Jimmy figured Pete must have gone right home the moment classes ended—the amount of time he spent out of his room and at his parents' house had increased drastically. Jimmy ambled past his room one morning a few days prior to confirm a hunch; Pete had moved out of his dorm early, sometime during the past month or so, and it hung open and empty, waiting for a janitor to come by and erase any trace of Pete's existence from it.

There was still a week to go before the actual graduation ceremony, and he had nowhere to go, except work and his dorm. Every time he thought about going into town for any other reason he balked. There was nothing for him there.

He lay in bed the morning after the final day of senior classes, listened to the bells ring and the shuffle of underclassmen filing out the dormitory exit, found a thrill in knowing those bells and processions didn't apply to him anymore.

He had half a mind to barricade his door and hide in his room until the ceremony, but something about the warm weather and the sudden elimination of scholarly structure in his life had him feeling some of his old decisiveness again, and he thought _Jimmy Hopkins doesn't hide._ He let himself lay in bed for a few minutes longer, and then he hauled himself to his feet.

Once again he felt some satisfaction in putting on a regular t-shirt on a school morning. Not that he'd ever paid much attention to the dress code before, but the thought that the Bullworth brand was no longer his to bear was immensely freeing.

Once he was dressed, though, he was out of satisfying revelations, and had to address the fact that he had nowhere to go, and nothing to do.

He left the boys' dormitory and took off aimlessly southward across campus, toward the main building. The smell of spring was in everything now, the sun and breeze giving everything a suitable air of newness. A flock of freshman, running late, ran past him, whispering as they saw him. A particularly bold one called, "Hey, Hopkins!" Jimmy had gone from the psychopath who killed the Bullworth Werewolf to the hero that resurrected him, and once again he'd entered the good books in the underclassman's canon.

He continued on across campus as the sound of traveling students ebbed away, punctuated by the starting bell. It felt almost ritualistic, traveling his school grounds as a soon-to-be graduate. He thought of the many stories he'd read in English classes, tales of prep school students that the school board loved to assign them, where people returned to their alma maters, visiting the hallowed sites where they were hardened into men.

But all of Bullworth, it seemed, was one huge, brick testament to Jimmy's youth. There was no hallowed ground here because he'd desecrated it all; no fearsome haunts because every inch of the grounds were fearsome. The gym, still flame-scarred, the brick facades, still flecked with paint. Even the Hole felt no more fearsome than the rest of the school, in the end no more than a place of a burgeoning friendship.

He felt the realization smack him like a hand across his face. _Of course, genius,_ he thought. There was somewhere he could visit after all.

* * *

The access door to the roof was, inexplicably, unlocked, and the staircase leading up was somehow shakier than he remembered—though last time he'd climbed them had been at a full sprint, and he hadn't had time to notice the way the metal staircase jostled with every footstep. Out on the roof, the air was colder and stung his lungs with every breath. He crept to the edge of the roof and looked down. He was never particularly afraid of heights, though he couldn't remember the roof being _this_ high. But, then again, he hadn't been looking down much last time, eyes trained ever upward as he gained on his nemesis.

 _Nemesis_. The word sounded comical now. The rigid metal scaffolding was still erected around the bell tower, and he made his way up the access ladders, cold metal biting into his hands. There were fewer obstacles this time around, and yet it was slower going, a much less urgent ascension. He pulled himself onto the final wooden platform, climbed the staircase to the belfry.

A few things stood out to him, as he turned the corner into the belfry proper. The fallen bells had at some point been removed from the great craters they'd created in the floor, and the floorboards patched up. Furthermore, the rest of the bells had been removed completely—without them, the belfry was no more than three tall, wide, angular archways, leading out and over the front precipice of the bell tower. Jimmy walked forward, lightly, not entirely trusting the new slats on the roof. It looked different up there, in the sunlight, every surface, every flaw thrown into full relief.

He continued until he reached the front, where the protective railing had been extended across the entire front of the building, and found someone already there, legs dangling over the edge, deep in thought.

"Fancy meeting you up here," Jimmy said casually.

Gord Vendome squeaked, a wholly undignified sound, and fumbled his cigarette, swiping it as it fell and only serving to bat it further away, where it flicked through the air and floated into the courtyard below.

"Very nice, Jimmy," Gord said. "Thanks so much."

"Hey, anytime," Jimmy replied. He gripped the bar and dipped down to settle beside Gord. He pulled his own pack of Lucky Strikes from his pocket.

"Want some?"

Gord took one look at the packet and wrinkled his nose. "God, no."

They sat in silence for a moment as Jimmy put the cigarette between his lips, lit it, not missing the furtive glance Gord stole his way.

"Actually, I'll take—" he began, but Jimmy was already handing a the packet and lighter his way.

He lit one, grimacing. "It'll have to do," he said. He handed the lighter and carton back, and Jimmy tucked them away. When he straightened, he saw Gord looking at his shirt.

"You going there?" Gord asked, gesturing at Jimmy's shirt.

Jimmy looked down. He hadn't paid much mind to what he'd put on that day, and he saw the UNH Wildcats emblem emblazoned on the chest of his gray t-shirt.

"Yep," he said. "Probably, anyway. I'm going on delayed entry. Taking a year off."

Gord nodded sagely. "That's not a bad idea," he said. "I think Harvard recommends that, actually."

"You going there?" Jimmy asked, half-jokingly.

"Nope," Gord said. Jimmy couldn't tell from his tone whether he was disappointed or merely conversational.

"Ah."

"I'm going to Georgetown."

"Wow," Jimmy said. "For law, right? That's a good school."

"It's _very_ good," Gord said.

"That's in D.C., isn't it?"

"Correct," Gord said, blowing smoke into the open space before the bell tower. "Right in the heart of the federal government. Lots of opportunities there."

The conversation fizzled, as college talk often does when one had goals as different as theirs. Jimmy tipped his head upwards and looked at the sky. It looked the same as it did from just about any roof he'd every been on; somehow he felt closer to it anyway. He looked back down at Gord, who was watching him.

"Don't take this the wrong way, but do you come here often?" Jimmy asked.

Gord grinned. "I do, in fact," he said. "Helps make your problems look smaller when you're this high above them."

 _Rich person problems,_ Jimmy thought, though he didn't say it. "Everything _does_ look small from up here."

"That's why I like roofs," Gord said. "Aside from the rustic quality of them, of course."

"I like roofs, too," Jimmy said.

"I know," Gord said. "I remember."

The view from the rooftop was clearer than he remembered, with no rain and little cloud cover to obstruct his view. He could see clear to Blue Skies, indistinct but unmistakable, and the highway beyond, shrouded by trees. From so high up, Bullworth's flaws weren't just indeterminate but invisible, the graffiti, and spit, and blood, all blending into the brick and bitumen and leaving only an impression of stately grandeur behind. The garages were just garages, the dorms just dorms, and all of them only buildings.

"Things all turned out okay, didn't they?" Jimmy asked, almost to himself; he'd half forgotten Gord was even there.

"What do you mean?" Gord asked, with an amused grin. "For who?"

"I dunno. Everybody." He met Gord's bemused gaze and laughed. "Forget it. I'm in 'small problems' mode."

"Right," Gord said. "I'm not there yet. Give me a moment."

Jimmy handed over another cigarette. Gord lit it on the butt of his own, and then flicked the spent cigarette as far as he could outward. With a flash of red and then a smudge as it smoked out, it flickered toward the ground stories below, and out of sight.


	19. Inglorious

_**SUMMER 2009 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 19**_

 _"Fuck you, I graduated."  
_ Tyler, The Creator, "Inglorious" - _Bastard,_ 2009

* * *

The morning of graduation, the sun was slow and reserved in its ascent and the day dawned gray and low. Jimmy's mother was due to arrive any minute that morning, and he had to remind himself that he did not believe in omens anymore, and not to take the weather as one. The gray skies didn't last long though, and by mid-morning the sun had risen and the skies were a clear watery blue.

He met his mother out in the parking lot, along with the rest of Bullworth's Graduating Class of 2009, many of them already wearing their deep teal graduation gowns. She stood beside Graham's car, nervously patting her hair into place.

"You're early," Jimmy said.

"We're just on time," Graham said stiffly. "I said I'd be here at nine and I'm here right at nine."

"Okay," Jimmy said, put off by Graham's behavior. His mother gave him a sharp sideways look. "Thank you for coming," he added quickly. How long had Graham been his stepfather? In all that time, they'd properly spoken maybe six times. The less Jimmy spoke to his mother, the less tension seemed to exist between them, if only because they couldn't fight if they never spoke. Now, his mother was hugging him, though he felt in her stiffness that this was more a following-through of motions than an actual show of affection.

"I'm so proud of you, Jimmy," she said theatrically.

"I can't believe you graduated on time," Graham said.

"I can't really believe it either," Jimmy admitted. If Graham tried to size him up after that, Jimmy didn't see it; he turned his gaze toward the crowd of robed graduates and their parents. He was hoping to catch a glimpse of Pete before the ceremony, though for what purpose exactly he wasn't sure.

"Who are you looking for, Jimmy?" his mother asked absently.

"Nobody," he said finally.

"Never mind that," she said. "Go grab your things from your room. We can put them in the car before you have to head inside."

Jimmy looked at the backseat of Graham's car, where he'd only sat a handful of times. His belongings were few, and after a thorough disposing of things he didn't need, everything that belonged to him fit into a few bags. He imagined himself in the backseat, the bags lined up beside him. It seemed strange that everything he was could fit into a space that small.

"Jimmy," his mother said.

"I know," he replied. "I'm going."

He took off toward the boys' dorm, away from the parking lot and commotion. The dorm was almost empty, and Jimmy was struck with the impression of being somewhere he wasn't supposed to be. He climbed the stairwell to his room and collected his spare belongings and set back downstairs. But some hunch gravitated him down the hall toward Pete's room, which, along with all the other rooms, had been left open.

Pete was inside, his graduation gown already donned, his cap tucked under his arm. He looked up, caught Jimmy standing in the doorway. He looked unperturbed, as though he'd known Jimmy would be drawn to his room.

"I'm saying goodbye to it," he said simply. He waved an arm around at the empty room, the bare pine desk and the stripped twin size bed.

It took Jimmy a second to find his voice. "You barely spent any time here," he said.

Pete smiled. "Yeah, you're not wrong. Felt it'd be better not to leave anything out. " The room, like any room that was built to be abandoned again and again, looked clean and inviting stripped of all signs of life.

Full speed ahead, Jimmy blurted, "I'm so fucking sorry, Petey." As though he'd only been waiting to be cued, Pete walked toward Jimmy and threw his arms around him.

Jimmy let his duffel bag clatter to the floor beside him, lifted Pete right off the floor.

"Fuck, put me down!"

Jimmy released him. "Sorry," he said, grinning madly.

"No, _I'm_ sorry," Pete said. "This fucking school..." He gestured around again, though this time Jimmy knew he was gesturing past the walls, at the campus beyond. "There's no way I'm leaving it like this. I survived this dumbass place, and I'm leaving on _my terms._ "

"I can drink to that," Jimmy said, but Pete wasn't done.

"And aside from that, I don't know what the hell I was thinking. I expected you to just _love_ Gary, just because I did. I practically twisted your arm into coming along all the time, before you were ready...I mean, how were you _not_ supposed to hate him? I was pretty pissed for a while, but I know you're not a bad person. More than pretty much anyone else I know. I'm pretty sure about you, is all I'm saying. That's pretty valuable, to have people around that you're sure about."

Jimmy wasn't sure if he wanted to cheer or kiss Pete or both, so he threw his arm around Pete's neck. "I'm glad to have you back, Pete."

"Likewise," Pete said. With a final look back into his own room, he grabbed his own bag off the floor and stepped into the hall. "Welp," he said. "Let's go graduate, I guess."

* * *

The ceremony was more or less exactly how Jimmy had always pictured it would go. The sun grew far too warm by midday, and no one could hear Dr. Crabblesnitch over the speaker system in the football field, where the administration had puzzlingly decided to hold the ceremony every year for decades. The water bottles underneath their chairs warmed within an hour, and someone, predictably, fell as they stepped off the podium and into the grass. But as the speeches ended, and the time came to move their tassels, and then, finally, throw their caps into the air, Jimmy couldn't help but feel some small thrill—he allowed some part of him to revel in the celebration but the greater thrill, the cause of the smile on his face, was that Pete was there with him.

He and Gary might never be friends, he thought again, not for the first time and not for the last. But he was trying. He'd try for Pete.

* * *

Afterward, Jimmy introduced Pete to his parents—his mother tried to hide her joy that he had a friend who seemed polite and normal—and as Graham explained to Pete that back in his day, the private school boys dressed in tuxedos and the girls in gowns, and whose idea was it to do away with traditions, and now they had everyone in robes like some sort of _public school_ , Pete took Jimmy aside.

"Come my house to celebrate."

Jimmy looked over at his mother and Graham, but truthfully it wasn't them he was worried about. "Gary'll be there." It wasn't a question, but Pete nodded in confirmation anyway.

"Somehow I doubt he'll be happy to see me."

Pete shook his head, shrugged. "It doesn't matter," he said bluntly. " _We're_ the ones who just graduated, aren't we?"

"But—"

"So, this is our celebration. It's not up to him."

Once again, Jimmy was struck by how much Pete had changed, and how much it seemed to have happened under his own nose. For a moment he felt he could see Pete as others might see him, and would see him when he went off to college in the fall. The first time they'd met had been circumstance, the way of almost all high school friendships—if Pete had never limped into Jimmy's room his first day at school and shaken his hand, they might never have been friends. But this man before him…if he met Pete for the first time today—Pete, as he stood before him now, with a determined look that settled his features in such a way that suggested he'd worn it many times before—he'd want to know him better. In a parallel universe, Jimmy could see himself being the one reaching to shake Pete's hand.

He couldn't disagree with Pete's resolution, especially so soon after he'd decided to talk to Jimmy again, and so he simply agreed.

* * *

Jimmy wasn't sure what was reasonable to expect from Gary when he saw him again. Part of him was prepared to be ignored. Jimmy was good at ignoring things. If he saw Gary and felt some coldness, some distance, he would've matched it easily, would've taken as much space as he felt appropriate and no more. He could be politely distant when he needed to be. And he wasn't far off-base—when he arrived at Pete's house, greeted Mr. and Mrs. Kowalski (the look on the latter's face suggesting that she knew just what a huge step this was for everyone involved), and found Gary already there, he did feel that polite, distant frostiness, underscored by Gary's distinct disinclination to meet his gaze.

There was something else, though. Something he hadn't quite anticipated, had failed to factor into his preparations on the ride over. During dinner, as Mr. Kowalski told embarrassing stories about Pete's childhood, Jimmy _felt_ Gary's presence at the table, on the other side of Pete to his left, felt him like a cold spot in the room. _You're just on edge,_ Jimmy told himself. _Who wouldn't be, after everything that's happened?_ That wasn't it, though. This was something else, something familiar tinted by its context. He heard Gary laugh at something Pete said at just the same time he laughed himself, and he caught Gary's eye in a sideways glance for just a moment before looking away again. He felt a rising heat, a kind of terse excitement that should have been reserved for actual progress, steps from hatred to indifference to tolerance, but was inexplicably present nonetheless. Jimmy's patience with his own reasoning-downs had worn thin by then, and he was quick to accept the revelation, had it whittled down to the bare truth by the time dinner was over. _Distance makes the heart grow fonder,_ he thought. Cliche after cliche after cliche.

He had a crush on Gary.

He hadn't abandoned skepticism entirely, and he tested himself that night, as covertly as he knew how. He watched the angle of Gary's hips as he leaned on his good leg, the way his fingers gripped and tightened around the hand grips on his crutches. His broad shoulders and full lips. Those could be written off as lust, he knew just as well as anyone, and he knew he needed to get Gary alone, just to speak to him for a moment, to confirm. _Nothing is less sexy than Gary's personality, right?_ he thought.

Gary was pointedly avoiding him the entire night, an act which escaped neither his nor Pete's notice, though the fact that the house was still standing and no attempts on anyone's life nor confessions as to such had occurred seemed to more than placate him. After dinner, and cake—a sheet cake, with a fondant graduation cap atop it—Jimmy and Gary helped bring Pete's things inside, and as Gary pulled a backpack out of the trunk of Mrs. Kowalski's car, Jimmy lifted an arm to brace the hatch door, and as his hand came near Gary he flinched, almost imperceptibly, at the proximity of Jimmy's arm. Jimmy felt a bewildering mixture of guilt and clumsy endearment. Gary shouldered the backpack and leaned on his crutches, as though nothing had happened, and angled himself toward the front door, where Pete and his parents had already passed inside.

 _Wait for a better time,_ Jimmy thought, before realizing there probably wouldn't be one.

"Gary, wait," he said. Gary jumped, visibly startled.

"...What?" he asked, turning heavily on his crutches.

Jimmy pushed the trunk door upward and released it, the hydraulic hinges hissing as it fell into place suspended above their heads. He lowered himself into the trunk and sat at the edge, among the rest of Pete's things. He patted the space beside him. "Just talk to me for a minute."

Such a pointed invitation was hard to reject, even, it seemed, for Gary, and with a heavy sigh he submitted, gingerly lowering himself into the trunk beside Jimmy. His bad leg jutted out awkwardly, cast propped against the gravel.

"Make it quick," Gary said.

"Sure," Jimmy said.

The silence they sat in for a moment was not as awkward as Jimmy might have expected. _It's just Gary, after all_ , he thought.

"How long are you gonna be on those?" Jimmy asked, indicating the crutches.

"Another few months," Gary said. "I can't really bend my leg yet." Jimmy knew this was not an indictment against him, but it felt like one. It was all he could do not to blurt an apology. Pete could be hastily apologized to, but Gary was more delicate. Jimmy felt another rush of affection toward Pete for being as simple as Gary was complicated.

He was trying to decide his best course of action when Gary spoke first.

"You know I might be antisocial?"

Jimmy turned this over in his mind. "Like, you don't like talking to people? Or...?"

"No, dumbass," Gary said. Jimmy felt a private thrill at the insult, a step beyond the stiff politeness he'd been proffering all evening. "Not _asocial_. _Antisocial_. Like..." he paused as he searched for a proper descriptor. "Misanthropic."

That one was in Jimmy's lexicon. He nodded. "Sounds about right."

"According to my last appointment, I might have traits of _antisocial personality disorder_."

"Just traits?"

"Yeah. I guess the therapy is working enough that I don't really qualify as having the whole thing." Gary smiled humorlessly. "I've got quite the laundry list of shit wrong with me at this point, James. Both physically and mentally."

Gary was speaking more than he had all night, and Jimmy reigned himself back, hoping Gary would choose to identify his silence as an invitation to dominate the conversation.

Gary leaned back in the trunk, propping himself against his hands. His navy t-shirt shifted, and Jimmy could see the edge of a scar, red and puckered, beneath the edge of his sleeve. He only gave it only a cursory glance before looking back out toward the house and he couldn't age the scar—maybe from the accident, maybe from the fall. He wondered how many marks he'd put on Gary's body, and had to exert a significant amount of self control to keep his mind from wandering past that point and into further thoughts of Gary's body, and the other kinds of marks he could put on it. _Down, boy,_ he thought. _Not yet. Not until you know._

It was Gary again who broke the silence. "Jimmy," he said, in a tone suggesting he wanted Jimmy to look at him.

Jimmy obliged, catching Gary's eye in the dark. "Yes?"

"I don't hate you."

Jimmy could sense there was more Gary wanted to say, and he kept quiet.

"I _think_ I do, sometimes. Especially after that day in the hospital. I was in so much pain, and you were the perfect scapegoat." He was looking back out toward the house again, avoiding Jimmy's eyes. "I can hate you so much when I let myself." He laughed a little, under his breath.

"In therapy we talk about _before-after moments_. Like, one moment where you can define everything as 'before it' and 'after it'. Sometimes, when I really hated you, I was so sure that you were my before-after moment. I was positive I'd hate you for the rest of my fucking life. I was kind of obsessed with you. My therapist had me list my before-afters out one time, and the first few entries were either you, or your fault." He laughed again. "God, I'm fucking rambling. That's probably your fault, too."

"I dunno about that," Jimmy said, before he could stop himself.

Gary ignored him, continued on. "I just...I'm sick of letting you _control_ me. That's really what it is, in a way. You have all this power over me because I'm _letting you_ be powerful, in my head. I mean, shit, I'm the one who drove the fucking car!" he said, he said, with an air of incredulity as though he were talking about somebody else's idiocy and not his own. "It's not your _job_ to play party hall monitor. If it were anyone else I wouldn't have even cared." He shook his head, sighed. "I dunno. Am I making sense or do I sound like a fucking lunatic?"

"Nah, you're making sense. For once." Feeling free to apologize, he added, "I'm sorry anyway. I dunno how that factors into your whole power dynamic thing, but I _am_ sorry."

"Thanks," Gary said, and Jimmy could tell, or maybe just hoped, he meant it. He looked back into the trunk, at the remainder of Pete's things. He wondered where the hell Pete was and whether he was expected to take all his garbage inside on his own, before he realized Pete had probably seen them in the back of the Explorer and had pointedly remained inside. _That weasel,_ Jimmy thought, but he found the circumstances didn't matter much. He'd take everything inside entirely on his own if he was asked. _Gary is talking to me_ , he thought, and as he began unloading the trunk, he felt a weight lifting. Then he thought, _And I'm definitely in love with him_ , and the weight settled back in.


	20. Help I'm Alive

_**SUMMER 2009 (cont'd)  
**_ _ **Chapter 20**_

 _"If you're still alive, my regrets are few. If my life is mine, what shouldn't I do? I get wherever I'm going, I get whatever I need while my blood's still flowing and my heart's still beating like a hammer."  
_ Metric, "Help I'm Alive" - _Fantasies,_ 2009

* * *

As if the proceedings that evening had not been enough, Jimmy dreamed of Gary, like a final nail in the proverbial coffin. He awoke twisted in the fleece throw he'd fallen asleep beneath, on the couch in Pete's living room. He lay awake, staring at the ceiling and replaying the dream in his mind to ensure he wouldn't lose it, his mind full of gauzy impressions of Gary's voice in his ear, his scarred flesh, and the way his body might feel pressed against his. Horrified, he found himself getting properly aroused, which felt almost sacrilegious in Pete's living room, in full view of family portraits and baby pictures and Little League ribbons.

Jimmy pulled himself upright and peered into the kitchen, where the microwave was just barely visible. The digital display read 3:04. In four hours and fifty-six minutes, his stepfather would be pulling into the Kowalski's driveway to take him home.

Jimmy got to his feet, dressed himself quickly. He could already tell that he wouldn't be able to get back to sleep, and there was something about laying awake in someone else's home that had always unsettled him. He was sure he'd feel the same way for weeks once he had to live in Graham's house for real, but now wasn't the time to practice playing stepson. After some consideration, he left a note on the table, just in case:

 _couldn't sleep, so went for a walk. not going far, of course._

 _-jimbo_

He set off from Pete's house deeper into the neighborhood, not feeling up to taking his chances with the vagrants who tended to roam the town after dark. It was balmy and clear, a proper early summer night. As good as the warm air felt, Jimmy almost wished there was rain, or clouds, or _something_ he could mentally bitch about to distract him from his newest concern, now that he and Gary and Pete were all speaking again.

It almost pissed him off, how undeniable his desire for Gary was. Images from his dream, now supplemented by fresh fantasies, played almost unavoidably in the background of his thoughts. No, there was no denying his desire. The real question was what to do about it. Unbidden, his most trusted mandate came to mind— _just do what you want_. But it couldn't always be that simple, and he'd accepted that. After all, hadn't doing just what he wanted and for so long caused him enough trouble? He knew what he wanted. He pretty much always did. He wanted to get Gary alone somewhere and use him up in every way he could think of until there was nothing left to do besides swallow him whole. The fantasies, as good as they were, were no match for the real thing, and he knew that very well. And there was something so deeply, almost primordially entrancing about the idea of wooing Gary, almost like completing a set; he had already broken his body and mind, and he was sure that getting Gary to fall in love with him would break his spirit better than anything else possibly could.

But as he shook that predatory urge from his mind, and forced himself to think rationally, he knew that he couldn't break Gary like that, at least not that easily.

Gary didn't love like he did. Jimmy felt sure of this, to an arrogant degree. He didn't pine after Jimmy, or lust after him, or maybe anyone. If he ever caught wind of Jimmy's feeling for him, Gary's gaze would fall upon it, the reflection of Jimmy's glowing weak spot glittering in his eyes. Gary only loved because he liked feeling loved. He'd done it to Pete, and he'd do it to Jimmy. This was all as clear to Jimmy as the stars in the sky and the pavement beneath his feet, and he felt he owed it to himself to not bare his weaknesses to Gary that easily.

And, of course, he owed it to Pete, too. Pete, who had earned the love Gary didn't have to give. Pete, who knew Gary's therapists by name, who held Gary's hand in the hospital. Pete didn't need the competition. Pete didn't _deserve_ the competition.

And maybe, he owed it to Gary, too. Maybe the last thing Gary needed was for Jimmy to take yet another form, friend to rival to friend to rival to friend to lover. Maybe he needed to just be Gary's friend. He could be Gary's friend, he thought decisively. He was good at being friend's with people who had once been rivals, and if he got lost along the way he could look to Pete, who had been Gary's friend all the while.

Some unformed thought had crept in his mind for months, one he didn't really extend proper attention to until now. It had fizzled back into place when Gary mentioned the hospital, and now he thought about how Gary must have felt in those moments of lucidity in the jeep in that ravine on the side of the road. He remembered the fleeting, nauseating memory of his own accident nearly a decade before, of the network of cracks in the windshield, and the back of his mother's head bouncing against the roof of the car, and the bruises he couldn't place in time. The whole memory was maybe seconds long. He tried to imagine what it was like to be trapped in a car for four days. He tried, pushed at the confines of his imagination, to imagine how Gary must have felt when he flickered in and out of consciousness, limbs hanging and useless.

He wondered if Gary thought he was going to die. He wondered if maybe by the time they found him, Gary thought he already was dead.

Just the barest suggestion of that dread, the kind brought on by few things besides the certain, slowly crawling approach of death, sent a shiver through Jimmy despite the warm night. His trajectory had taken him to an unfamiliar neighborhood of Bullworth—strange, to think there were entire swathes of Bullworth he was still not familiar with—and as he passed a set of squat rows houses, nothing but a short yard separating the house fronts from the street, he caught a glimpse of his watery reflection in a window, his image diluted in the glass, and he saw his messy hair, and his wrinkled shirt, and he felt a sudden appreciation for his life, for all the fights that went his way and the few that didn't, and his who mother tried to kill him and never succeeded, and his stepfather who was cruel but loved his mother and let her drive his car. He thought of Zoe's poem, for the first time in a while— _I'm speechless: I am living. I remember you._

He hit the end of the cul-de-sac and doubled back. Maybe, if it looked like everyone was still asleep, he'd head past Pete's house and into town. He'd find somewhere that was open that early that sold cigarettes, and try and get away with buying some. He'd light one on the way back to the suburbs. And then, if it wasn't still too early, he'd call his stepfather and remind him, needlessly, that he'd said he come at eight.


	21. The Suburbs - Epilogue (Summer 2010)

_**SUMMER**_ _ **, 20**_ _ **10  
**_ _ **Epilogue**_

 _"If I could have it back, all the time that we wasted, I'd only waste it again. If I could have it back you know I would love to waste it again. Waste it again and again and again."  
_ Arcade Fire, "The Suburbs (Continued)" - _The Suburbs_ _,_ 2010

* * *

"That counted."

"No, it didn't."

"Pete, did that count?" Gary's voice was rising, indignant.

Pete, from his seat at his desk: "I mean, you definitely _could_ have died. The potential for death was there."

"It was an _accident_ ," Jimmy protested.

"Are you really going to disqualify _accidents_ at this point?" Pete asked pointedly.

 _Fair enough_. "Fuck." Jimmy said. He leaned against the wall from his seat on Pete's bed, an unmistakable portrait of defeat. "Put it on the murder board." Gary whooped, and Pete stood obligingly, procuring a whiteboard marker from his desk drawer. The Murder Board was a section of the tall whiteboard on the wall above Pete's desk, divided into two smaller sections labeled JIM and GARY, with two subsections beneath each name—a tally, and a bulleted list for purposes of posterity. Gary's list was technically shorter, but the first entry—ALL OF SOPHOMORE YEAR—they had unanimously agreed counted as three entries, and as a result his tally had been greater off the bat. Now, Pete added KNIFE ATTACK to Jimmy's list, right below JEEP ACCIDENT.

"Don't use the word _attack_ , what the fuck?"

"I agree," Gary said. He stood by Pete's closet, holding the unfolded camping knife they'd been using as a box cutter, which Jimmy had carelessly tossed his way only minutes before, only narrowly missing his head. "I think _attack_ is too soft. How about just _stabbing_? Really cuts to the point, if you'll pardon the pun."

"Just say I threw the knife! Christ, no need to _dramatize_ it."

"Oh I'm sorry, are either of you the mediator?" Pete asked pointedly. "No? That's what I thought. _Knife Attack_ stays." He added a mark to Jimmy's tally. "Congratulations," he said, stowing the marker away. "You fucking freaks are finally tied. Now, could you _please_ finish opening that box?"

"God, making me handle my own _attempted murder weapon_..." Gary muttered, but he took the knife and cut the tape away from the shipping box at his feet anyway. He reached inside and removed the heavy textbooks from within.

"Jesus, Petey," he said, skimming the first one. "Russian looks like _bullshit_."

"It kind of is," Pete admitted. "I regret choosing it for a minor every day."

"Speak some Russian for us, Petey," Jimmy said.

" _No._ "

"Come on. Say, _'I love sucking dick'_ in Russian."

"What the fuck, Jimmy?"

"What? You'll need it." Jimmy narrowly dodged a spinning pencil.

"Seriously, Pete, say something in Russian," Gary said. Pete's closet door creaked as he leaned against it. "Unless you learned _nothing_ all year."

"I've learned!" Pete said. "I just get flustered speaking it in front of people."

Jimmy laughed. "Oh, I'm sure that won't be a problem at all _in Russia_."

"That's not what I meant," Pete replied. He leaned back in his chair. "And anyway, I don't have to worry about talking to actual Russians for a while." He reached for his cell phone on his desk, tipped the display towards himself. Jimmy couldn't see the screen from where he sat but he could tell by the rust-colored early evening light coming in the window that it was around seven or eight. "Damn, we were supposed to eat like hours ago."

"We could still eat," Gary noted.

"I dunno," Pete said. He looked at Jimmy. "When you heading back?" Pete asked. "You're leaving pretty early tomorrow morning, right?"

"Yeah," Jimmy said, feeling an anxious pang at the thought of tomorrow morning. He wasn't _nervous_ , exactly. Lord knows he had plenty of experience moving in the past. This move, however, was cushioned by a slew of firsts. He was going to be living in Durham for the first time, and moving on his own (that is, without his mother) for the first time, and—this one was particularly exciting—he was going to be living with a lover for the first time. Unassuming on their own, they were somewhat formidable when considered all together.

Pete seemed to pick up on his unease. "Sorry I can't help you guys move and everything."

"It's cool," Jimmy said. "I know you've got work."

Gary said nothing, but he didn't need to. He'd been able to ride along in a car for short trips, but it'd be a little while longer before he could be on the highway again. Jimmy knew better than to ask, and Gary knew better than to bring it up.

"Don't worry Petey, I'm sure they don't mind," Gary said. "They probably want to _break the place in._ "

Jimmy smirked, but Gary couldn't have been further from the truth. Jimmy knew Duncan's idea of breaking in a new apartment was playing an inaugural game of Grottos and Gremlins in it. Jimmy's idea of christening a new place was a little closer to Gary's.

Gary was bewildered by Duncan. Everything from his scarred hands, to his penchant for fantasy, to his uncontrollable imagination. Jimmy knew Gary didn't like people who weren't easy to figure out, and since the first time the two had met Jimmy had been at the occasional mercy of one of Gary's bewildered, subtly mocking looks. _This guy? Really?_ But Jimmy couldn't help but be endeared by Duncan, how uncomplicated he was—though in truth it was the things he couldn't comprehend about Duncan that drew him in. They had enough in common, but when he really looked at the facts, Jimmy couldn't say that he and Duncan were that alike at all.

He wasn't much like Gary, either.

Jimmy could think about Gary in those days, now that he'd had a year to wallow in the truth, but even now it could hurt if he thought about it for too long. _How do I not pine after someone_ , Pete had asked him two years ago. He thought he knew, then. If he'd learned anything in the past few years, it was that there tended to be a gap between what he knew and the actual truth, a gap only difficult lessons could bridge.

Sometimes, if he was worked up about something and wanted a backboard to throw against, he let himself get angry about Gary all over again. It was hard to stay angry for long, though, and he supposed he had Pete to thank for that. When Pete was around, the potential for a fight seemed to smooth away, and as a result he found that all his painful memories involving Gary had become softened by ones that were smaller, mundane—innocent. After all, spiders didn't build their webs in doorways just to inconvenience people—rather, they never factored people into their considerations at all. That, he'd decided, was the crux of his goal for Gary, if he couldn't have him (and he _couldn't_ ); he would put up with Gary, because he could take it. Gary would spin his webs no matter what, and the least Jimmy could do was keep Gary focused his way. After all, who could be a better target than him? Even when he was tight-fisted and livid at Gary, draped in strands of silk, Jimmy could always find something to appreciate in Gary's webs.

"What do you say, Jimmy?" Pete said. "You think you have time for pizza?"

Jimmy was definitely hungry, and he figured home could wait. "Fuck it," he said, hauling himself off Pete's bed. "I can eat."

* * *

On the way home from Napoli's—Jimmy still felt strange going in there without his uniform—he took the long way onto the highway. Something compelled him, from time to time, to drive past Bullworth, get a glimpse of the entryway he'd crossed a thousand times. Only a year had passed since graduation, and some days it looked distant, as though he were viewing it through a glass. Other times he felt as though he could walk right into the boys' dorm and it would be the most natural thing in the world, as though he'd done it the last night and many nights before. The moon was high and bright, and as he watched he almost felt the past few years ebb away, and he was looking at the entrance of the academy with fresh eyes, as he'd seen it that first day in autumn when he was fifteen years old, tall and daunting, foreboding and austere. But he blinked, and the illusion was gone.

* * *

At Graham's house, he had to step around boxes that had been moved into the front hall in preparation for the next morning. _Your friend_ , his mother and stepfather called Duncan. They had no idea, and he wasn't particularly keen on telling them. _Your friend is coming at eight, right? Move the boxes into the front, so you don't wake us up in the morning_.

It was nearly eleven now, and he was sure as he stepped into the front hall of his stepfather's house—which was big, and had a suitably large entryway, big enough that his footsteps echoed—that his mother and Graham were probably already asleep. He carefully eased the door shut and climbed the foyer stairs to his room.

His room was small and bare. He hadn't bothered to decorate it, saw it as hardly more than another stop in a long line of temporary holdings, and the hardwood floor, deep red walls, and mahogany furniture were the only features of the room, aside from the backpack leaned against the small desk beneath the window. He felt uneasy still, thinking about the next morning, and he sat at his desk, unzipped the backpack and rummaged through it, searching for a distraction.

He came up with the journal he'd been given a few weeks earlier, for his nineteenth birthday. It was large, with lined sheets and a black affixed ribbon for bookmarking, and a pine-green, hard linen cover. Inside the front cover was written, in messy script:

 _Make good use of it!  
_ _\- Lionel_

He wasn't sure how Mr. Galloway had gotten wind that he was considering minoring in English when school started in the fall, but he had, and the gift was fitting. Jimmy didn't have much use for a notebook like that, or at least didn't think he did, but it felt good, solid and sturdy in his hands, and even without a plan for them the blank pages were inviting and rife with possibility.

He held it in his hands, opening and shutting it, then he pulled a pencil from a front pocket of his bag and opened the notebook to the first page. Finding out where to start was usually the hardest part—it came to him pretty easily from there. He was feeling sentimental, and anxious, and the two combined gave him a strange, untethered feeling, like a piece of him had come unglued, and maybe this—writing everything down—would smooth that part of him down again.

But where to start? He flicked through a slew of possible beginnings in his mind.

One piece of Mr. Galloway's advice that had stuck with him over the years was that, when you were still feeling a bit raw about what it was you wanted to write about, you could distance yourself from it, and write like you were watching it unfold from above, a spectator in your own life, and only years later would he do just that, starting with that cold night his sophomore year when he snuck into Bullworth with his backpack rattling and his mind made up to do bad things.

But here he had a simpler starting point in mind, and he couldn't imagine himself writing in any way besides as though it were happening right now. And he began, imagining hot leather in his back, and the sun in his face: _"So here I am, at probably the worst school in the country, whose alumni are nothing but arms dealers, serial killers, and corporate lawyers. Real scum. And that old creep thinks he can tame me...?"_

He was still writing as the dawn broke red and low in the sky. He wrote for a long time.

 _fin_

* * *

 _if you read this entire work from beginning to end, I want to extend a warm and sincere thanks. the month-long period I spent writing this was incredibly therapeutic. i hope it left some impact on you. it certainly left one on me.  
-magda_


End file.
